


the flutter of your earnest heart, it will fill the silent seas

by waitfornight



Category: X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Days of Future Past (2014) - Fandom, X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1960s, Alternate Universe - Mermaid, Alternate Universe - Still Have Powers, Canon Jewish Character, Dark Fairy Tale Elements, Disabled Character, M/M, Muteness, Pining, Sexual Content, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-15
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2018-05-20 20:14:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 38,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6023224
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waitfornight/pseuds/waitfornight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Charles is a merman discontent with the boundaries of his shrinking world, wanting adventure in lands he’s only visited in his dreams. When the opportunity to at last have his wish granted arrives, he sets out in search of the only human he’s ever made contact with: Erik Lehnsherr, who after years hunting and being hunted, is trying to forget the past in the seclusion of a small fishing village. </p><p>Erik doesn’t mean to love again, not after the pain it’s already won him. But the appearance of an eerily familiar young man, swept in by the sea, makes him believe in second chances and wonder if, for the first time, he can’t finally have peace. He should have known: it’s much too late for fairy tales. </p><p>Dangers lurk in the heart of the village and in the secrets he and this man he’s come to love keep from one another, threatening to tear them apart…</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from Sleeping At Last – Watermark and the lyrics from Oh, Juliet! – Hunting the Canyon Below Our House

_My dear, I fear we’re falling to danger,_  
_hunting the riverbed in pursuit of the things that haunt your head,_  
_oh, the violent things that remind you of me._  
_You swore that you would never walk to the shoreline where all the fishermen hoist their sails._  
_They dance in the moon to the siren song, before their day begins._

 

Erik shivers, reaching out in his sleep for the heavy, woolen blanket crumpled at the foot of the bed as a breeze blows in through the open window, rustling the top of the sheets.

Moths crowd the window screen, drawn to the glow of the oil lamp forgotten on the nightstand. The wind leafing through the pages of _The Once and Future King_. The floorboards creak around the bed, sounding like footsteps circling, the cottage groaning wearily as it settles. The radiator against the wall clangs noisily, startling Erik awake, his eyes cracking open, immediately closing again against the lamp’s light.

For a moment he does nothing but lie still and listen to the wind, to his own breathing, to the clink of the radiator. He feels the ache in his joints, the chill in the air as the temperature falls in the early hours, and draws the blanket closer, stretching little by little out into the cottage, feeling out the metal; the wrought iron of his bed, the door latch, the radiator, the cold, empty woodstove, every bolt and nail, until he’s comforted enough to withdraw back into himself.

The knob of the oil lamp turns itself until the flame shrinks away, and slowly, one by one, the moths retreat back into the night.

Shadows spread out along the walls and hang above him in the spaces between the exposed ceiling joists. Through the west window the forest trees stand close together, leaving half his home pitched in total darkness, and just behind his head, through the east, below the crag where his cottage sits, the black waves roll one atop the other against sand glowing white beneath a clouded moon.

He closes his eyes, reaching with his powers for the window, the hook and eye closure securing itself.  The wind knocks softly at the glass. The sea a low roar down below.

He listens again, harder this time, assuring himself as he has already done once before earlier in the night, as he will do again before morning, that he is alone.

 _He is alone_. It’s the last thought he has before his mind grows fuzzy and he begins to drift, lost to the current of his own dreams, unable to alter the course.

 

* * *

 

_This madness will end with your death._

Charles can hear the admonishment even now with so much distance between himself and the deep, dark caverns of his birth, hiding himself in a tangle of kelp, his eyes tracking a shimmering school of mackerel. From a gold chain around his wrist he carries a pocket watch that he lets slip and sink below to the sand, readying himself. He will need both his hands for this.

_Think of your sister if you will not think of yourself. All those who venture above do not return._

It had been a plea then, a last effort to make him stay. But he has come of age and nothing anyone can say will dissuade him from his choice. _Besides,_ he’d said, _Raven understands I am not deserting her. I will return before the last moon of autumn._

_– You won’t._

_– You are throwing your life away._

_– Charles, you must listen._

He did not recall his keepers ever using his name before, not since he’d first chosen it while exploring the shores of England where he happened across a man sitting himself down on a grassy overhang close to the water each day to read aloud to himself as if trying to commit each word to memory. _The Origin of the Species_. _The Voyage of the Beagle_. _Fertilisation of Orchids_.

Charles had stretched himself out on a warm, smooth rock below, his eyes half-closed in the sun while he listened, his tail idly stirring the water.

\-- _It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change --_

Once he’d discovered the author he could not resist adopting the name for himself.  

When he would not heed his keepers’ warnings to stay away from humans they began force-feeding him stories; sea trawlers with inescapable nets, fishermen who would harpoon him for sport, the slow decay of being trapped in an aquarium. He would wind up no more than a catch of the day. A trophy.

_Since the death of your sire you’ve become reckless. Risking sightings and slaughter. And worse – capture._

He waved them away as though they were nothing but a human child’s bogeyman.

 _You are young and you are foolish._ He _is_ young but he is stronger than any of them.

 _I love fools’ experiments_ , he’d quoted airily. _I am always making them_.

He had not even left yet when they began mourning him.

He brushes aside the memory along with their fears as his stomach growls to him in complaint. For now he has other, more pressing matters to attend to.

Each synchronized movement of the schooling fish sends a shiver of anticipation along his scales. And he waits only a moment longer before parting the kelp and speeding toward the shoal. The mackerel pack themselves in close, forming a small bait ball as he careens into their masses, snatching one with both hands, digging his nails in deep before it can escape. He sinks his teeth into its wriggling flesh, tearing away chunk after chunk until he’s stripped the bones clean, leaving behind nothing but a silvery cloud of scales.

He flies toward the fish again and again, gorging himself until he feels ready to burst. Afterward he heads back to the swaying kelp to collect the pocket watch he’d let fall to the sandy floor. It’s frozen in time, stopped the moment it plummeted into the sea. He twists it over in his hands, stroking his fingers against the case before wrapping the chain back around his wrist and rising toward the surface.

The waves strike against him, the wind cutting at his face as he peers at the pinpricks of light dotting the surface of the water; a village by the sea.

The air near the shore is heavily perfumed with the scent of spruce. He inhales it deeply, lingering close to a small granite island, one of several jutting above the water, supporting a few scraggly weeds and a single tree, watching the dark silhouettes of boats nodding in the harbor, feeling the weight of the watch suspended from his wrist.

He’s found the right place. He’s sure of it this time.

 

* * *

 

A tap against the window sends Erik flying from his bed, his muscles coiled tight, his heart galloping in his chest. For one wild moment he fears that it’s Schmidt. Or else any one of the number of wretched souls he’s ever brought to a miserable end. He’s both relieved and annoyed to find Sean on the other side of the glass instead, a flashlight illuminating his face. One hour before his alarm is set to go off, Erik sees.

With an irritated flick of his hand the closure releases and the window springs open. “Why didn’t you knock on the door?”

Below the moon’s half-light Sean appears paler than normal, tinged almost grey, his curly hair tangled by the wind. He looks like a banshee suspended on the crag, come to foretell Erik’s death. “A body washed up on the rocks down near Muñoz’s place. A woman.” He sounds tight-throated, his teeth chattering in the cold.

“A drowning?” Erik asks, already knowing the answer won’t be as simple as that. They’ve had their share of drownings in this place and not a single one has ever merited waking him from his sleep.

“I don’t know. She’s all torn up really bad. It looks like an animal got to her.”

“Is it anyone we know?”

“It’s hard to tell,” Sean says. “Like I said, it’s bad. Logan sent me to get you.”

_“Why?”_

“He wants you to come. I don’t know why but he said to hurry.”

With a frown Erik closes the window, his body protesting as he leaves behind the warmth of his bed, the bite of the cold sharp as he steps off the woven rug and onto the bare wooden floor. He fumbles around for his clothes, muttering a string of curses. He wants coffee. More sleep. Not to have to go trekking down to Muñoz’s to look at a corpse.

Once dressed he steps out into the battering wind to join Sean, taking the lead down the path toward the shore, looking out over the harbor. The outlines of houses, all chipped paint and faded clapboard, wedged in close together, the forest behind a dark, jagged line against the starry sky.

He’s only been living here a few short years, blending himself in with a group of mutants trying to eke out a living amongst a small, quiet fishing community. The kind where everyone knows everyone else. But already it feels as though he’s lived here for ages, his life falling into a grueling but simple routine. No one suspects him here or troubles him with a second glance and for that at least, he’s grateful.

“It’s just up there,” Sean says over the thundering waves, indicating with his flashlight to the pebble and driftwood strewn stretch of muddy beach ahead.

Erik’s eyes pick out the kerosene lantern balanced on a stone before anything else, a cloud of fluttering moths pinging themselves against the glass globe, then Logan and Armando just beyond its ring of light, their backs turned to him. He sees the body, twisted and mangled in the mud, caught up against a gnarled driftwood stump, seconds later. The mud squelches under his feet as he moves in closer, sucking at his boots with every step.

Armando acknowledges his presence with a curt nod of his head but Logan doesn’t even bother to look at him, his eyes fixed grimly on the body ahead, the cigar clenched between his teeth smoked halfway down.

Erik isn’t surprised by the sight of death. Not at all. But he is surprised to see it here, like this. “Where are the police?” he asks, warily eyeing the small throng of onlookers gathering in morbid curiosity as word quickly spreads.

“On their way,” Logan answers, taking a long, deep drag from his cigar, his next words tumbling out with a cloud of smoke. “Victor took off again.”

Logan and Victor’s relationship is a complicated one, Erik knows. Brothers, or half-brothers from what Logan’s told him, who tolerate one another’s existence as an inevitable given. They’ve been living in the village for close to a decade, and while in that space of time Victor’s developed a reputation as a man who can accomplish the backbreaking labor of ten men, there is no comradery with him. He’s apart from them. Wilder. More dangerous. The animal in him always lurking just below the surface.

“So before the police arrive –”

“I want another pair of eyes,” Logan finishes.

There are too many eyes here already, Erik thinks. “Am I supposed to tell you I don’t think it’s Victor?”

Logan makes a sound like a grunt that he supposes is meant to be an answer. 

“Those are defensive wounds,” Armando says under his breath, jerking a thumb toward the body. “Those aren’t from being tossed around on the rocks. Those are deliberate. Something made those.”

“It sounds like you’ve already decided,” Erik says.

“I have,” Armando says before inclining his head toward Logan. “He hasn’t.”

“How do we know it’s not an animal attack?” Sean interrupts, fingering his St. Michael medal, the one he keeps to protect himself while at the mercy of the sea. “You know, a _real_ animal. I know they had a mountain lion sighting down in Two Rivers about three months back.”

“That was a rumor,” Armando says. But Logan’s gaze narrows sharply, studying the body with new intent as he takes another draw from his cigar. Exhales. Then draws again.

“Can you smell anything?” Erik asks, watching the twist of Sean’s medal, the silvery glint of it in the lantern light. When Sean notices what he’s staring at he lets the medal fall back beneath the collar of his shirt.

“I asked that already,” Armando says.

“No,” Logan answers. “The body’s been in the water too long.”

“That doesn’t mean that it wasn’t Victor,” Armando says, so quiet Erik scarcely hears him. “The police are almost here, and once they start questioning people, where do you think they’re all going to point?”

“I can’t just point at him along with everyone else,” Logan growls. “I need to be sure.”

If it _is_ him, what will you do? The question is there on Erik’s tongue but he swallows it back down, turning his head at the sound of Moira’s voice ordering everyone back. “We aren’t going to get anywhere with this right now,” he says instead. “We should go.” Just the thought of the police showing up and asking questions is enough to set his teeth on edge.

“Erik,” Logan says, “you think Victor did this? The truth.”

Erik tenses at the sound of a police siren wailing in the distance. “You’ve spent nearly your entire life with Victor,” he says, itching to get away. “You would know better than I would.”

Armando heaves a sigh at his answer, shaking his head, while Logan casts his gaze toward the ground, pondering. 

Erik edges past them, leaving behind the murmur of voices and encroaching police siren, walking until he hears nothing but the waves. Midway up the path back to his cottage he stops, facing into the wind as he looks out across the sea, the sun just beginning to stretch over the horizon. 

For the briefest moment he imagines he sees something moving in the water near one windswept granite island, but it’s only a trick of the light.


	2. Chapter 2

**Germany, 21 years earlier**

 

Max pulls his covers up to his eyes and wriggles deeper into the warmth of his bed as the wind howls fiercely through the trees, bringing down a shower of oak leaves and spattering rain against his bedroom window. The branches swaying back and forth casting long, spindly shadows over his walls.

He hasn’t been able to sleep for hours now and has only just mercifully begun to drift off when he hears something hard chink against his window. The first time he ignores it, the second time he sits up, pushing the blanket away and crawling on his knees to the edge of the bed where he strains to look past the window into the backyard.

He nearly tumbles backward when Magda’s head suddenly pops into view. Her dark hair plastered against her skull, her lips curled back from her teeth in a huge grin. She’s scaled up the lattice on the side of the house like an imp come to steal him from his bed.

The moment he opens the window, the wind comes gusting in, sending his homework flying off his writing desk. He frowns disapprovingly. “What is it?”

She flashes him another smile. Her tone excited as she says, “The storm from yesterday was the worst we’ve had all year. I want to see what it washed in before anyone else does.”

“We can go look later,” he groans.

“No, Max, come on. We need to go _now_ while it’s low tide.”

“ _Later_ , I said.”

Magda purses his lips while she thinks. Her eyes brightening as she says, “But what if there’s a giant squid washed up on the beach? If there is, don’t you want to be the first one to see it?”

Max is quiet while he considers. He _does_ want to see a giant squid. His uncle Erich said they could grow to be as long as a bus. “I’d have to sneak past Mama and Papa.”

She nods eagerly, already climbing back down the lattice.

Max leans forward out the window. “I didn’t say yes yet.”

“ _Come on_ ,” she hisses, vanishing before he can say no.

There’s a lamp on at the end of the hallway when Max slips quietly from his room. The one meant to keep monsters away. The one Ruth insists on having on before she’ll allow herself to be tucked in. Before going to bed himself, Jakob will usually come up the stairs, check to see that she’s asleep, and turn it out.

Max stands in the middle of the hallway listening for his papa’s footsteps. If he’s caught he’ll have to explain why he’s dressed and wearing his rain parka, but all he hears is the sound of Ruth’s soft, quiet breathing as he slides past her doorway.

No matter where he places his foot on the stairs, each step he takes makes the wood creak, and it takes him what feels like forever just to make it to the bottom. Convinced with each sound he makes that his papa will hear and come to investigate.

He doesn’t, and Max manages to make it nearly to the front door unnoticed. He only has to pass the kitchen where a puddle of warm light leaks out into the otherwise dark house. His parents have been staying awake longer and longer into the night lately.

He creeps forward as silent as he can, wincing at each groan from the floorboards, and peeks around the doorway. His parents are talking quietly together, and the teakettle on the stove is starting to rattle. He watches his mama remove the kettle from the burner, unaware of his presence, while his papa sits at the kitchen table, studying the paper folded open in front of him.

He’s about to dart across while they’re both occupied when a large crash from outside, like the sound of a garbage can being knocked over, makes him jump.

Edie sets the kettle down and pulls back the window curtains. “What do you suppose that was?”

 _Magda_ , Max curses silently.

“It’s all this wind,” Jakob sighs. “Probably knocked over the garbage can again. I’ll take care of it in the morning.”

Max hears his papa rifling the paper, the sound of water being poured, then the clink of a teaspoon against porcelain.

“Anya was fired from her work,” Edie says after a moment.

Max strains harder to listen. Magda hadn’t said anything to him about her mother getting fired.

“And last week the Mendelssohns were forced to close up their store.” She laughs quietly, the sound strangled and empty of any humor. “Soon there won’t be anywhere left to go in town.”

Max looks carefully around the doorway again to find her staring anxiously down at her tea. Her face is drawn and weary.

“Edie,” Jakob says, “let’s not do this now. We’ll be all right, you’ll see.”

“I’m afraid,” she whispers. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to be but I am.”

Max feels a sudden pang of guilt. He shouldn’t sneak out right now. If his mama finds out, she’ll worry. But he can’t pass up the chance of maybe finding a giant squid. And he can’t just leave Magda waiting alone outside.

“I’ll take a trip to see Major Scharf,” Jakob says quietly. “I’m sure he’ll be able to do something for us.”

Max hears the sound of his papa’s chair scraping the floor then and cringes. There’s no way he’ll make it back upstairs quickly enough without being heard. But his papa doesn’t come around the doorway. Max risks a last look into the kitchen to see him kiss Edie gently on her cheek, then again on her nose to make her laugh. With the two of them distracted he seizes his chance and heads for the door.

It’s a full moon, but with the dense cloud cover there’s no light to see by. Max hardly needs it though. He knows every inch of his own backyard and can practically walk it with his eyes closed.

With the wind whipping through his hair he heads for the oak tree that stands just outside his bedroom window, startling when Magda sneaks up behind him and catches him by the hand.

“It took you _ages_ to get out here,” she says, tugging him along impatiently.

“Well I might have gotten out sooner if _someone_ hadn’t been out here crashing around. Mama and Papa both heard you, you know.”

“Sorry,” Magda tells him. “I accidentally knocked over the garbage.”

They pause together beneath the spread of the oak’s heavy limbs, Magda releasing Max’s hand for a moment to dig in her pocket. Max hears the hiss of a lighter and a tiny flame erupts in the darkness, flickering madly as Magda cups a hand around it, shielding it from the wind.

“I left my flashlight in my bucket,” she says. “It’s sitting on that stump at the bottom of the hill.” She raises her hands, letting the light dance over Max’s face, and frowns as she studies him.

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

“I heard my parents talking.”

“Arguing?”

“No,” he says. “Just talking.”

“Well?”

“ _Well_ ,” he says, “you never told me your mother was fired.”

Magda’s face crinkles in confusion. “My mother wasn’t fired.”

“Mama said she was. She told Papa that your mother was fired from her work.” He kicks at a pebble and sends it rolling across the yard. “David Penzik’s father was fired and his whole family had to move.”

“ _She was not fired_.”

“What if you have to move away?” he asks.

Magda’s flame sputters out as the wind picks up. She makes a soft sound of frustration and Max hears the lighter give another hiss before the flame comes quivering back to life.

“I’m not going to have to move away,” she says. “So stop worrying and come on.”

He nods half-heartedly and follows her out from beneath the oak and down the steep hill that leads into a thicket of birch trees.

In the thicket they stop beside a low birch stump where Magda closes the lid of the lighter and scoops up the bucket she uses to haul their found beach treasures. She hands the flashlight over to Max, and they continue through the trees to a muddy ravine stinking of rotten leaves that will spill them out onto a secluded beach if they follow it far enough. 

 

* * *

 

High above, the gulls ride the thermals, crying shrilly as Max searches the tide pools with Magda, crawling over rock ledges and puddles of cool, salty water to find clusters of mussels and clams amid bright green sea lettuce.

The sky is just beginning to pale, the ocean choppy and dark, churned up by the wind. The breeze coasting in off its surface raising goosebumps up and down Max’s skin.

“Look at this,” Magda says beside him, pointing out a single small sea urchin.

They split up, each of them taking a pool to investigate its contents. Magda calling out that there’s sea stars, sea anemones and barnacles in hers, while Max frowns down at a pool filled with snails.

They comb for seashells, filling Magda’s bucket with cockles and scallops. Max strains his eyes to see as far as he can in both directions on the shore before finally having to admit to himself there’s no giant squid to be found.

The sun is fully risen by the time they head further up the shore, carefully picking their way over the rocks. After finding more mussels hidden within the pools, they climb a low algae covered rise, Magda’s bucket slipping from her fingers, spilling the shells, when they find what’s waiting on the other side.

“Max,” she whispers, voice tinged with awe, her eyes going wide as she clings tightly to his hand.

Max keeps trying to blink the vision away but it stays stubbornly put, the weak sunlight casting its rays down on washed out grey-blue scales.

Every night before putting Ruth down to sleep, his papa would sing for her in his deep, warm voice:

 _Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,_  
_Daß ich so traurig bin;_  
_Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,_  
_Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn._

The words gentle and melancholic, full of a yearning for something Max couldn’t comprehend.

A gull shrieks down to them before circling back out over the waves, scattering the memory away.

Max shivers. He’s seen this creature depicted countless times in dozens of different ways. But each interpretation has fallen short and not a single one of them has prepared him for _this_.

The creature’s undoubtedly female, the upper portion of the body mostly resembling a woman’s, her red hair tangled around her face, but her flesh has a mottled, scaly sheen, and where her legs should be, there is instead a long, nearly serpentine tail, ending with a flowing, tattered fin. 

Her dark eyes are blank and filmy, gaping up at the sky. Her body twisted so that he can see the cruel looking barbs jutting from the backs of her forearms and running the length of her spine. 

Heartbeat crashing in his chest, Max edges a little closer, peering at the row of pearly, sharp teeth visible in her slightly ajar mouth. As undoubtedly sure as he is that she’s female, he is also just as sure she’s a predator.

He hears his papa’s voice in his head, asking in his laughing tone if he’s seen any mermaids lately. _‘Be sure to steer clear, my boy,’_ he’d say, _‘mermaids are harbingers of misfortune.’_

He can’t help but admire her, even if she makes him uncomfortable. She’s another anomaly in the world. Something strange and other like himself.

He walks a slow, careful circle around her, keeping his distance. Even dead she’s monstrous. With her long tail and fin her body is almost double the length of his.

“She’s beautiful,” Magda says.

“Yes,” Max agrees, spellbound, “she is.”

“I’m going to touch her,” Magda says, falling to her knees beside the mermaid.

Unease prickles down the back of Max’s neck. “ _No_.”

Magda looks up at him, hesitating with her hand outstretched. “Why?”

Max feels too foolish to admit a part of him fears this creature could somehow reanimate and drag Magda away with her back into the sea.

Magda turns her gaze back onto the mermaid, tentatively gliding her fingertips along the scales. “Max, you have to feel this. It’s strange, almost like touching silk.”

Not taking his eyes off the mermaid’s face, Max slowly lowers himself beside Magda, placing a trembling hand against the scaly, dark tail.

“I feel sad for her,” Magda says softly. “What do you think happened?”

He shakes his head, at a loss.

“What should we do?”

Max runs all the way back down the beach and along the muddy ravine as fast as he can. _Faster_ when he thinks about Magda sitting alone with the dead mermaid.

He’s nearly reached the birch thicket, his pulse deafening in his ears, when he spots his papa heading his way.

“There you are,” Jakob says, clamping a hand on Max’s shoulder. “Your poor mother’s up in the house making herself sick worrying over where you’ve run off to.”

“I was only at the beach,” Max wheezes out, clutching at his ribs.

“ _By yourself_ ,” Jakob says. “How many times have you heard me say you aren’t allowed to go by yourself?”

“I wasn’t. I was with Magda.”

“ _Who is not an adult_. I’ve told you, _you need an adult_ when you go to the beach. _It’s dangerous_.”

Max nods impatiently, still panting.

“You and I will be having ourselves a little chat later,” Jakob says, “but in the meantime, get yourself back to the house and apologize to your mother.”

“I can’t,” Max says. Though he dearly wants to. He can’t stand knowing his mama’s upset with him.

“Oh?” Jakob raises an eyebrow. “And why not?”

“Because Magda’s still on the beach waiting for me to come back.”

“I might have known,” Jakob sighs, shaking his head. “We’ll have to go and take her home then.”

“But that’s not all,” Max says. “I was coming back to get you. To tell you.”

“Yes?”

“The reason Magda’s still waiting for me on the beach.”

“Spit it out, Max.”

“We found a mermaid washed up on the rocks.”

There’s a long moment where his papa behaves as though he hasn’t heard. He looks down at Max, troubled, and begins stroking his beard. “Mermaid?”

“I’m not making it up,” Max insists.

Jakob bends himself forward to look Max in the eye, and slowly Max can see his papa’s gaze turning inward.

“Alive?” he whispers, his eyes bright and faraway.

Max shakes his head _‘no’_ and swears he sees his papa’s face fall.

He clasps Max tightly on the shoulder, his voice lowering despite it only being the two of them. “Run ahead and wait for me. Speak to no one else. I’ll be along shortly.”

Max spends nearly an hour with Magda sitting on the rocks beside the dead mermaid before he spots a boat rowing along the shore. He gets to his feet, squinting against the white morning light. “It’s Papa,” he says.

His papa’s face is grimly set as he lands his boat, his movements slow as he climbs out over the side. At the sight of the dead mermaid he utters an oath, his eyes raising skyward.

He doesn’t speak a word to Max or Magda, mumbling inaudibly to himself as he wanders away over the rocks, considering each loose stone until he finds one he deems suitable, heaving it up into his arms and carrying it back. He then grabs the coil of rope from beneath the bow seat and begins the arduous task of creating a net around the mermaid’s body.

“Give us a hand here,” he orders them, finished at last. “Help me pull her onto the boat.”

Together the three of them lift and pull the mermaid toward the little boat landed on the rocks, panting and struggling with the effort. The mermaid is heavier than she looks, and Max nearly lets go in fright when her head lolls back against his shoulder, but at last they manage to get her in and situated.

Her tail hangs over the stern, her fin trailing through the water, as Jakob takes the oars and rows out into the cold sea.

Max and Magda watch from the rocks as he secures the stone to the net enclosing her and with a tremendous heave that nearly topples his boat, shoves her body overboard.

“Max.” Magda says his name softly, like a plea, as the mermaid sinks below the waves.

His papa never mentions the mermaid again in the remainder of his life, and that night Max waits in the dark of his bedroom, listening to hear him sing _Die Lorelei_. From that night on he sings Ruth _Numi Numi_ instead.

 

* * *

 

“Tell me a story,” Max says, while perfecting his side of the sandcastle. The air is warm, smelling strongly of the sea, and the sun is bright, reflecting off the calm waters.

Magda smiles up at the sky and rolls onto her stomach. “Maybe you’d like to hear about lamias?”

Max glances at her sideways, skeptical.

“They have the shape of a woman above the waist and the tail of a serpent below,” she says, drawing the tip of her finger through the sand, spelling out her name.

“No,” he says, inspecting Magda’s side of the sandcastle. “Tell me something else.”

Magda scowls at him as he begins to remake her side as well. “ _Tell me something else_ ,” she singsongs, mocking him. Then she quiets, chewing her lip thoughtfully.

“What about the one with the faun?”

Max shakes his head. “You’ve told me that one a dozen times already.”

“Hmm.” She leans her elbow into the sand and presses her cheek to her hand. “ _Die Wichtelmänner_ , then.”

Max pauses in his task, folding his hands together in his lap, and she smiles at him before she begins.

“A certain mother had her child taken out of its cradle by the elves, and a changeling with a large head and staring eyes, which would do nothing but eat and drink, lay in its place.”

“Wait, I think I’ve heard this already.”

“ _Max_ ,” she laughs, “don’t interrupt. In her trouble she went to her neighbor, and asked her advice. The neighbor said that she was to carry the changeling into the kitchen, set it down on the hearth, light a fire, and boil some water in two egg-shells, which would make the changeling laugh, and if he laughed, all would be over with him.”

Max considers her while she recites the story from heart, her sun-kissed skin, the light glinting off her curls, and feels his stomach flutter. He shifts awkwardly on the sand, reaching deep in his pocket for the brass key his mama had thrown into a drawer, claiming it matched not a single keyhole anywhere in the house.

“The woman did everything that her neighbor bade her,” Magda says, pushing herself up until she’s sitting cross-legged in front of him, watching as he curls and uncurls his fingers around the key. She smiles as it begins to reshape.

“When she put the egg-shells with water on the fire, Goggle-eyes said, "I am as old now as the Wester Forest, but never yet have I seen anyone boil anything in an egg-shell." And he began to laugh at it. Whilst he was laughing, suddenly came a host of little elves, who brought the right child, set it down on the hearth, and took the changeling away with them.”

The key lifts from Max’s hand, liquefying in the air, and then solidifying as it winds itself into a series of long, thin strands.

He isn’t happy with the result; the metal isn’t good and his skill is shaky, but when he’s finished he has something resembling a necklace that he offers to Magda shyly.

She smiles at him a little crookedly, leaning forward to kiss him on his cheek, and the fluttering in his stomach intensifies.

They leave together when the tide comes in, washing away their sandcastle and Magda’s name. Magda has his necklace around her neck, reaching up now and then to run her fingers against it gently.

When they’re nearly to the birch thicket, she asks him, “Do you know what I read about the merfolk? I read they like it when you sing for them, that if they’re pleased by your song they might grant you a wish.” She turns toward him, frowning then. “I also read that sometimes they eat people, just because they can.”

He’s still turning over what she said while getting himself ready for bed later that night, and when his papa comes in to see him, sitting on the edge of his bed, Max cuts him off before he can speak.

“Magda read that merfolk sometimes eat people. Is that true?”

In the lamplight, the lines on his papa’s weathered face appear deeper and more pronounced. His eyes are distant. And his shoulders have fallen forward as if he’s carrying around all the weight of the world. “To tell you the truth,” he says, “I don’t rightly know. But I can tell you this: merfolk are bad omens. And if you’re smart you’ll let the creatures be.”

“But Papa –”

“Shh, my boy,” he hushes him. “Listen, I’ll be leaving on a trip soon to see an old friend of mine.”

“I know,” Max says, slumping back against his pillow. “Mama already told me.”

“Well then, you also know that while I’m away you’re to help out your mother.”

“ _I know_ ,” Max groans. “You don’t have to tell me.”

His papa gives him a stern look, silencing him, and reaches into his pocket. “I wanted to give you this before I go.”

“What is it?”

“A gift.”

Max’s powers reach out for it first, slipping past the handkerchief it’s wrapped in and caressing softly over the gold. “Your pocket watch?”

His papa unwraps it carefully, holding it up so he can see, the gold case and chain glinting in the light. “My father gave it to me when I was about your age. And his father gave it to him. Now I’m giving it to you.”

Max swells with pride as the watch is placed into his open palm. He feels the internal gears working harmoniously together, closing his hand around the case and grinning as his papa reaches out and tousles his hair.

 

* * *

 

It started innocently enough. Magda bet him she could swim farther than he could. Faster too. And he took off across the sand and rocks, throwing himself with a happy yell into the sea.

 _“You’re a horrible cheat! I didn’t say go yet!”_ was the last thing he heard from her.

He gets a glimpse of the wide open blue sky, exhaling and inhaling sharply, before another wave crashes into him, tumbling him over and under until he can’t tell up from down. He squeezes his eyes closed against the sting of saltwater as the rip current drags him seaward. He can’t hold his breath any longer. His lips part with a desperate gasp, and the sea comes pouring in.

Hands grip hold of him then, sliding along his skin. At first he thinks it’s Magda, but when they pull his body against theirs all he feels is the sleekness of scales. Panic stabs through him, his hands shoving blindly, trying to pry himself away.

Their hold on him tightens, his arms locked at his sides as they swiftly press their mouth to his, sealing their lips together in a kiss that floods his lungs with their breath.  For one foolish moment he forgets to be afraid. Their kiss tastes salty and faintly sweet, like the pears his uncle sometimes brings when he comes to visit in August. His head filling up with promises of warm, clear turquoise waters and moonlit grottos, his body falling lax in their hands, his ears thrumming with the slow pound of his own heart.

He’s only vaguely aware of the water frothing around him, unsure and uncaring if they’re ascending or descending until they withdraw their enchanted kiss and thrust him to the surface.

The abrupt change is jarring and Max struggles, choking in a mouthful of cool, dry air that burns in his nostrils and the back of his throat. He’s out of the rip current and close to shore. With a few short strokes his toes touch bottom.

In his effort to make it back to the beach he grows horrified with himself. They could have pulled him into the depths, drowning him and stripping him to his bones, and he would have allowed it. They could have done _anything_ they liked with him and _he would have allowed it_.

 _“Max!”_ Magda screams for him. He hears her splashing through the water just before she lands beside him on her knees.

She helps him crawl out the rest of the way and once he’s on the sand he falls to his stomach, his arms weak and shaking as he pushes himself back to his elbows, his stinging and blurry eyes trying to focus.

“Max?”

He hunches forward, gagging up the water he’s swallowed. “I’m alright,” he croaks after, shoving himself upright. “But there’s something out there.”

The waves roll one onto the next so that he cannot see what lay beyond them. Magda thumps her head against his shoulder, sagging against him in relief.

He takes one slow shuddering breath after another, righting his clothes, trying to find the words to explain what happened, when he realizes with a twist of his gut that his papa’s watch is gone. He’d been foolish and forgotten it in the pocket of his shorts when he’d dove into the sea.

“What is it?” Magda asks. “What’s wrong?”

“Papa’s watch,” he says, crawling back toward the water, stretching out his hand desperately. Several minutes pass before he whispers, “I can’t feel it,” and finally admits to himself that it’s lost.

 

* * *

 

He’s sitting on the tree stump in the birch thicket, his head hanging low, when Magda finds him. The toes of her worn shoes come into view, stopping just as they touch his.

“I heard about what happened,” she says quietly, and he curls further in on himself.

His papa traveled to see Major Scharf, whom he’d saved from enemy fire while serving in World War I, to ask for immunity. But while waiting in Scharf’s office, his papa was beaten by a group of Nazis. It went on for hours before Scharf brought it to an end. He threw his papa from his office then, claiming they would have killed him if he’d not intervened, and that now they were even.

“Will you look at me?” Magda asks.

Max lifts his eyes slowly to hers. He’s been crying and he doesn’t want her to see his face.

“I have something for you,” she says. She doesn’t mention the wet tracks on his cheeks.

“What is it?”

“You need to close your eyes.”

He stares up at her, silently trying to guess her intent. Dandelion seeds float past, caught up in the slight breeze. Dust sparkles in the sunlight.

“Trust me,” she whispers.

The air smells sweet with the rot of a decaying tree. He breathes in the scent, exhaling slowly before closing his eyes.

He feels strangely exposed, flinching as her cool hands cup his face, tilting back his head. Her breath shudders on his skin just before her lips touch his in a gentle and barely there kiss.

 

* * *

 

Magda was wrong. Her mother _had_ been fired, and like David Penzik and his entire family, she had to move away.

 _‘Forced out,’_ Edie whispered to Jakob in the kitchen while they believed everyone else in the house to be fast asleep.

The sky glows fiery red as the sun melts into the sea, the waves rocking Max gently back and forth as he lays in the bottom of his papa’s boat. She was his very best friend, and now his world seems too empty and too big without her.

Nearly all his neighbors have gone from their homes, and while his uncle and grandmother have been pressing his papa to leave too, Jakob refuses.

Max hums softly to himself, fragments of old songs, watching the gulls drift overhead on their way to shore for the coming night. He wipes stubbornly at his eyes, sniffling every so often.

A light knock against his boat quiets him. In the water, very close, he feels his papa’s watch. Slowly, he raises himself up to peer over the side.

A boy floats along beside him in the sea. And for a brief moment Max thinks that’s all he is. But then he blinks the tears from his eyes and notices the sheen of scales on the boy’s pale skin and the dark swish of his fishtail down below.

His papa’s watch is so close he could almost reach out and take it. The boy has it, twisting it around under the water with nimble fingers.

He would be afraid if he weren’t so filled up with grief. His grief makes him angry. And his anger has always had the power to cancel out fear. “You stole my papa’s watch,” he says, his voice little more than a ragged whisper.

The boy’s sea-blue eyes widen, but he doesn’t reply, and he doesn’t offer back the watch.

“Give it to me,” Max says, holding out his hand expectantly.

The boy stays where he is, staring at Max with an unreadable expression. Max feels his face begin to heat.

 _“Give it back to me!”_ he cries, lurching forward, snatching at the air, the boat rocking dangerously to the side.

The boy glides back out of his reach, watching him curiously as he stretches his fingers wide and points them furiously in the boy’s direction.

He can feel the watch right there in the boy’s hand but no matter how strongly he tries, he can’t summon the power to take it back. His face burns red with anger and shame.

“Give it back to me,” he says, quieter this time, more pleading.

The boy swims closer but not so close Max can touch.  He looks on the verge of something but before Max can decide what his mama’s voice rings out from the shore.

 _“Max!”_ she shouts, frantic with worry. _“What on earth are you doing!? Come in right this instant!”_

 _“Wait!”_ Max cries as the boy vanishes with a splash, taking the watch along with him, leaving Max nothing but a sodden shirt and a blurry glimpse of blue scales.

His mama keeps calling for him to return, but Max stares at the surface of the water until the light is truly gone. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The changeling story Magda recites: Die Wichtelmänner (translation: The Elves) is from the Brothers Grimm. 
> 
>  
> 
> [Die Lorelei](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m9LwyFoBaE)
> 
> Heinrich Heine: The Lorelei (From German) 
> 
> I know not if there is a reason  
> Why I am so sad at heart.  
> A legend of bygone ages  
> Haunts me and will not depart. 
> 
> The air is cool under nightfall.  
> The calm Rhine courses its way.  
> The peak of the mountain is sparkling  
> With evening's final ray. 
> 
> The fairest of maidens is sitting  
> So marvelous up there,  
> Her golden jewels are shining,  
> She's combing her golden hair. 
> 
> She combs with a comb also golden,  
> And sings a song as well  
> Whose melody binds a wondrous  
> And overpowering spell. 
> 
> In his little boat, the boatman  
> Is seized with a savage woe,  
> He'd rather look up at the mountain  
> Than down at the rocks below. 
> 
> I think that the waves will devour  
> The boatman and boat as one;  
> And this by her song's sheer power  
> Fair Lorelei has done. 
> 
> The Original: 
> 
> Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,  
> Daß ich so traurig bin;  
> Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,  
> Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn. 
> 
> Die Luft ist kühl, und es dunkelt,  
> Und ruhig fließt der Rhein;  
> Der Gipfel des Berges funkelt  
> In Abendsonnenschein. 
> 
> Die schönste Jungfrau sitzet  
> Dort oben wunderbar,  
> Ihr goldenes Geschmeide blitzet,  
> Sie kämmt ihr goldenes Haar. 
> 
> Sie kämmt es mit goldenem Kamme  
> Und singt ein Lied dabei;  
> Das hat eine wundersame,  
> Gewaltige Melodei. 
> 
> Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe  
> Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;  
> Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,  
> Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh'. 
> 
> Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen  
> Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn;  
> Und das hat mit ihrem Singen  
> Die Lorelei getan.


	3. Chapter 3

Erik rests his head back against the cool, lattice windowpane behind his seat in The Black Barnacle Inn, watching Moira, the owner and permanent resident of the Inn, talking with two older fishermen up by the bar.

The room is steadily filling up as many of the village’s inhabitants gather themselves around the Inn’s dark, stained wood tables for food and drink at the close of the day, their voices crashing against each other until he can decipher only an occasional gruff or sharp word.

For himself, he’s chosen his usual spot in the corner; a polygon shaped booth curving around a worn table that lets him see the whole of the Inn and every newcomer that walks through the door. At his side, Logan sits in companionable silence, half dozing with his chin bowed toward his chest.

Erik folds his hands around his whiskey glass, his gaze sliding along the mounted fish lining the walls, over the painting Sean had insisted on hanging up behind the bar despite Moira’s protests; colorful, bawdy sailors with a pinup-style mermaid stretched out between them, to the door as it swings open, spilling Sean in from out of the twilight fog.

He heads straight for Moira at the bar, leaning in close to whisper in her ear. She fights against a smile, then elbows him away.

Erik looks back down at his drink, struggling to keep his eyes open. The Inn is overwarm, increasing his fatigue. And his body is sore, battered from the day’s labor.

Nearly each day of the spring season, in the early morning hours, he heads down to the docks, joining Logan aboard one of the larger sea trawlers where he pulls on his slicker suit and rubber knee-high boots as the engine starts up and the navigation lights are switched on.

After checking the gear, they let the ropes go from the dock and slip out into the sea. The knobby granite islands glittering around them, whitecaps whipping against the bow, the sky just beginning to pale as he turns to look back toward land, watching his own cottage, framed by the dark spruce trees, shrinking into the distance.

By the time they’re finished for the day, his muscles ache sharply, his face is stinging from the wind and salt spray, and he’s covered with blood and scales.

Across the Inn, someone shoves their chair back hard, tipping it and sending it clattering to the floor. Erik blinks open his eyes, startled, and finds Alex glaring in his direction. He doesn’t realize Victor’s there until he’s sliding into the spot across from him.

It’s been three days since the body was found. He half expects to smell blood on Victor. Instead he smells only sweat and salt and the mildewy damp of Victor’s ragged wool sweater.

He shoots Logan a glance and finds him looking far more alert, though nothing about his relaxed posture has changed.

“Muñoz is giving me the cold shoulder,” Victor says, with an amused look back at Alex.

A quiet murmur ripples across the room. Armando stands up from his seat and says something to Alex’s back. Alex nods, turning and righting his chair before following Armando outside.

Logan eyes Victor darkly. “Victor. Where’ve you been?”

“I had some business to take care of,” Victor says.

“What business?”

Victor smiles at the cold tone of Logan’s voice. “I heard about a job prospect in Rumford. Pays more than I get now. I was sniffing it out. I have witnesses there and everything, Jimmy.”

“What would you need witnesses for?” Logan asks.

Victor’s grin turns devilish. “I hear there’s been a murder.”

At the tables nearest to theirs, Erik can tell people are straining to overhear the conversation.

“Muñoz is convinced I’m responsible,” Victor says. Logan nods. “You think I did it too.” It’s a statement not a question. “I’m hurt.”

“Did you?” Logan asks, leaning forward. “Sonofabitch, you need to tell me now if you did.”

Victor chuckles quietly. “Didn’t I tell you I have witnesses? I don’t know how long your girl’s been dead for but I’ve been in Rumford for the last several days.”

Logan studies Victor closely, obviously trying to read him, and Victor smiles at that too before turning his attention on Erik. He rests his elbows on the table and steeples his claws together, regarding Erik over the top of them. “I don’t know why everyone’s so quick to lay the blame on me. I’m not the one with the track record for murder here.”

Erik stiffens despite himself as Victor asks, “How many did you kill, Lehnsherr? Honestly.”

“Victor,” Logan says warningly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Erik says, squeezing his glass.

“There’s no need to be shy just because people are eavesdropping,” Victor says.

“Fuck you,” Erik snaps. “Don’t try bringing me into this.”

“Touchy,” Victor says, leaning back as he reaches into his coat and pulls out his pocketknife. “Are you sure you’ve been getting enough sleep?” he asks, flicking the knife open. He begins sharpening his claws then, as casually as if he were witling wood, filing them to razor points.

Erik knows that for once he shouldn’t rise to the bait. His past is an open wound Victor can’t resist pressing against just to gain a reaction from him. But if Victor decides to dredge up all the things he needs to stay buried to divert attention from himself, then he’ll have to start running again. He’s tired of running.

“I have  _told you_  not to do that in here,” Moira says to Victor, marching up to their table. “If you don’t knock it off and clean up the mess you’re making, I’m going to have to throw you out.”

“You really think you can?” Victor asks.

Moira’s expression hardens, her hands moving to her hips. “Put that away or  _get out_. I’m not going to tell you again.”

“Come on, do what she tells you,” Logan says.

Sean follows Moira over from the bar. “Hey,” he says, touching her waist, “it’s alright, I’ll handle it.”

Victor snorts. Moira pushes Sean’s hand away.

“No,” she says, her voice low, “ _I_  will handle it. It’s  _my_  Inn.”

Erik knocks back the last of his whiskey and motions for Logan to let him out of the booth.

“Easy,” Victor says to Moira and Sean. “Look, I’m putting it away now, so both you ladies can calm down.” His gaze flicks back to Erik then, watching him get to his feet. “Hey, Lehnsherr, before you go, tell me something.”

_“What?”_

“You think I did it?”

“I don’t really care,” Erik lies.

Victor smiles up at him viciously. “I didn’t. If anyone asks. If anyone wants to know.”

“I think everyone’s had enough of this for now,” Logan says. “So let’s drop it.”

“They’re all thinking it though,” Victor says loudly, for half the Inn to hear. “That I did it.”

“The police aren’t even saying it’s a murder yet,” Sean says. “And so far she hasn’t been identified. People think she might be some lost hiker or something. It might still be an animal attack.”

“Actually,” Bolivar interrupts from behind Erik, “that’s highly unlikely.”

Erik turns at his voice to see him sliding off a chair at one of the nearer tables with a stack of papers and a pen in hand.

“What is all this?” Victor asks, snatching Bolivar’s papers.

“Hey! You need to give those back. They’re important.”

“ _Really_ ,” Victor says, rifling through the stack. When Bolivar reaches for them he jerks them away, holding them out of reach. “Jump for them.”

Logan grabs the papers from Victor and hands them back to Bolivar.

“ _Thank you_ ,” Bolivar says, holding the stack against his chest and glaring at Victor. “I was going to say that she hasn’t been identified  _yet_. But there’s a missing person’s report out of Somerset, 35 miles north of here. Sarah Cleary. Apparently she went out jogging and never came home. The description of the clothes she was wearing when she went missing match with the woman found here.”

Victor leans out of the booth toward Sean as if to conspire with him. “Looks like it’s a murder after all.”

Erik doesn’t stick around to listen to any more. Outside the Inn, walking slowly along the dock, his hands shoved deep in his coat pockets, he gazes out at the water, turning back when he hears the door open behind him, voices spilling into the night as Bolivar steps out, then silencing again when he lets the door fall closed.

He offers Erik a half-smile when he notices him, then starts heading in the opposite direction. Erik makes it a few more steps before turning again at the sound of a muttered “dammit” and finds Bolivar bent down retying his shoe, his papers in a neat stack beside him on the dock.

He’s been living in the village for only a few months, renting a tiny, blue clapboard house sitting just off the water. A marine biologist from some pricey school in New York, sent to study the marine fish population Erik thinks. He wasn’t paying much attention when Moira told him.

A breeze gusts across the harbor. It’s not strong, but it’s enough to catch Bolivar’s papers, scattering them along the dock and throwing a few sheets into the water.

Bolivar gives a soft cry of frustration and begins quickly gathering them up while Erik stoops down to retrieve those that have gone in the water. He isn’t really looking at them, not until he collects the last one.

Shaking off the water, he walks it over beneath the light hanging outside the Inn. “Bolivar? What are these for?”

In his hands is an intricately detailed drawing of a mermaid, her face captured from several different angles, a sketch along the side solely of the patterning of her scales, erratic notes scribbled hastily along the margin. On closer inspection, he sees they’re the beginnings of a hypothesis. The image has begun to run in spots where it’s gotten wet, but in all the renditions he’s ever seen, this comes startlingly close.

“They’re my notes,” Bolivar says.

“Your notes?”

“For my research on marine populations and ecosystems dynamics.”

Erik’s eyebrows lift. “ _Research_ ,” he says, turning, holding the drawing up so Bolivar can see.

Bolivar glances at it quickly, nodding as he restacks his papers, then looks up again sharply, his face going flush with embarrassment. “Well not that.  _Obviously_. That’s – it’s a hobby.”

“You like to draw,” Erik says, handing the drawing to him along with the rest of his notes.

“Yes. I find it relaxes me.”

“Mermaids.”

Bolivar smiles, awkward and forced.

“It’s really good,” Erik says. “Very -- specific. Usually people just put a fishtail on some girl with a seashell bra.”

“I’ve had an active imagination since I was a child,” Bolivar says, pausing before adding, “I suppose it seems a bit odd.”

“No,” Erik says, looking back out over the water. “It’s easy to start believing in that sort of thing when you live in a place like this.”

“I never said I believed in them.”

“Then you’ve never seen one?” Erik asks. There’s no possible way of knowing for sure other than to just ask outright.

“What? A mermaid?” Bolivar chuckles, giving him another forced smile that he doesn’t return. He can tell Bolivar thinks he’s joking, and can see the exact moment when he realizes that Erik’s not, the smile vanishing in an instant from his face.

He looks back over his shoulder as if fearful of being overheard. “Look, if this is some kind of joke –”

“It’s not.”

Bolivar stares at him with an expression bordering on alarm. Whether from him guessing the truth or because Bolivar thinks he’s lost his mind, he isn’t sure.

“Maybe you  _thought_  you’d seen one but couldn’t be sure,” Erik says. Though he doubts it. That drawing is too precise, the notes in the margin too manic.

Bolivar gives their surroundings another hurried glance, checking again that they’re alone.

“Maybe I have a really good reason for asking,” Erik says.

Bolivar hesitates a long moment before admitting, “Yes,” his voice dropped to a whisper. “I’ve seen one.”

“Where?”

“Scotland. I was doing field work.”

“And?” Erik presses.

“I got a fisherman to drop me off on one of the offshore islands to collect a few samples. After he left I was busy sorting everything. Alone. When I heard this girl singing. It was in a language I didn’t understand and it was unlike any music I’ve ever heard on this earth. In all my life I’ve never heard anything so – so”

“Beautiful,” Erik finishes.

Bolivar shakes his head. “Beautiful is not adequate enough word to describe it. But it was also frightening, because I felt like –”

“Like nothing else in the world mattered. Like you could’ve died happy right there in that moment.”

“You’ve encountered one too,” Bolivar says, and takes Erik’s silence as an answer.

“I looked for her, walking all around the island until I found her. Sitting on a rock out in the sea not far from where I stood. She had the most terrific blue scales. And her hair was shining golden in the sun. She looked at me, and it was as if she knew everything there was to know about me. When she looked at me, it was as if she saw me.  _Me_. People, when they look at me, they see -- they don’t see  _me_. But she did. I could tell. We looked at each other for what felt like an eternity, and I wanted to call out to her, but then something splashed the water below and she flew off the rock faster than anything I’ve ever seen. Afterward I wondered if I’d imagined it. I would give anything to find her. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful in my entire life. Not a single night’s gone by that I haven’t dreamt about that day.”

“If you ever saw her again, what would you do?”

Bolivar looks wistful in the way his papa once had when Erik had told him he’d discovered a mermaid, as if he’s fallen in love with the mere idea. “I don’t know. I mean I’d want to study her of course. If I could. Learn about her.”

“So you’d capture her?”

“I wouldn’t go as far as to say that.”

“Suppose she didn’t want to come with you,” Erik says. “Suppose she didn’t want to be studied.”

Bolivar’s answer comes quicker than he expects. “Then yes,” he says, his eyes bright. “I’d capture her. I would owe it to the world, wouldn’t you say? People should not be deprived of such an astounding discovery. My theory is that there is an entire community unknown to us. Imagine if it came to light. The questions it would produce. How intelligent are they? What capabilities do they possess? Are they dangerous? If they are, what measures do we take to make certain the general populace remains safe?”

The words are like a slap to the face. The exact same rhetoric had been spouted off about mutants not eight years ago. Regardless of how he feels about the creatures, he can’t fathom sinking so low as to expose their existence to the world, hinging their fate on the rabid pack-mentality of humans.

“Well,” he says, straining to keep as much bitterness as he can from seeping into his voice, “I think I’m going to call it a night.”

“Wait,” Bolivar says, frowning up at him. “Aren’t you going to tell me your experience?”

“Maybe later,” he says, walking away without another word, leaving Bolivar standing confused behind him, watching him go.

“Erik?” he calls. But Erik doesn’t turn.

He steps quickly along the dock, not stopping again until he reaches the piling his own fishing boat is hitched to. It’s dark and quiet here, the only sound the lapping water and the gentle clanking of the boats. Up above, a flash catches his eye, drawing his gaze skyward.

Through breaks in the heavy clouds is the clear sky and the occasional brilliant streak of a meteor. He knows there’s going to be a storm later on in the night, he can feel it coming. But he hadn’t heard anything about a meteor shower.

He watches a few more zip between the clouds before snagging a kerosene lantern left on the dock that he suspects belongs to Alex and continuing on his way, drawing a cloud of moths along after him. Stopping again at the sound of a warbling voice floating across the water.

The hair on the back of his neck raises as he replays Bolivar’s story.

He wants to kick himself a moment later when he realizes it’s only Sean. Talking about mermaids has made him jumpy.

He peers into the dark and spots the light of Sean’s boat as he rows Moira around the harbor, serenading her with a love song, the fog lending his voice an eerie quality.

_Lonely rivers flow to the sea, to the sea_   
_To the open arms of the sea_   
_Lonely rivers sigh, "Wait for me, wait for me_   
_I'll be coming home, wait for me"_

Erik shakes his head and keeps moving.

Nearly to the path leading up to his cottage he slows, the strange sensation of being watched coming over him.

It’s only in his head, he tells himself. Between Bolivar’s story and Sean’s singing, his imagination is beginning to run away with him. But alone in the dark he can’t help raising the lantern, its light piercing through the fog.

He startles back a step when he catches blue-green eyeshine that blinks once in the light and then vanishes. Quickly, he raises the lantern higher, releasing it from his hand, his powers carrying it aloft, but there’s nothing for him to see now but a ripple expanding outward across the black water.

 

* * *

 

The voice echoes through the water, ghostly and beautiful in the manner that whale song is ghostly and beautiful.

Charles drags a nail gently along the wooden underside of the singer’s boat. _You really don’t know, do you? How precarious a position you’re in. You would be coveted by many of my kind. They would love you to death._

He circles beneath the boat. Once. Twice. Then, with an immense effort, leaves the singer be.

Beyond the harbor, he lifts his head above the surface, focusing on the lantern light bobbing along the beach, a grin stretching across his face as he dives back below, swimming after it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lyrics are from the song [Unchained Melody](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qiiyq2xrSI0) by The Righteous Brothers


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much to [Mikanskey](http://mikanskey.tumblr.com/) for the [gorgeous merman!Charles art](http://mikanskey.tumblr.com/post/141104110643/i-guess-this-will-be-my-first-fanart-of-a-series)!! <33333333333

**North Sea, 21 years earlier**

 

He comes to listen to their stories; trolls dwelling in deep, dark caves and faeries in hollow hills, fauns dancing and leaping around a crackling flame and giants whose shadows stretch across oceans, sometimes with Raven, sometimes alone, hiding himself among the rocks jutting above water, blinking his inquisitive eyes under the dazzling sunlight.

Raven plucked her own name from these stories.

Yesterday, at high tide, they slithered together through the seaweed, bellies brushing over soft sand, clever fingers unearthing scallops along the way as they moved toward a natural rock arch slick with algae and covered with barnacles, just large enough for them to peer through without being seen, as close to the human children as they dared.

The girl, Magda, by now they’ve learned their names, had picked up a gleaming black feather from the sand, dropped by one of the birds of Raven’s namesake, and held it to the light, twisting it this way and that before releasing it into the wind as she suddenly turned on her feet, racing after Max, the two of them chasing each other up and down the beach. Raven snatched it from the air as it sailed past and wove it into the tangles of her hair.

After the children had gone for the day and the tide retreated, the large, black birds flew in, scavenging between the rocks, startling the gulls, swooping and cawing above them. Raven mimicked their sound, their same guttural laugh bursting from her lips. He’d grinned toothily at her, taken her hand, and led her back into the waves.

Today they watch Max prodding at a jellyfish with a stick while Magda reads aloud from a green, clothbound book with gilt lettering.

“After long, long years a king's son came again to that country, and heard an old man talking about the thorn-hedge, and that a castle was said to stand behind it in which a wonderfully beautiful princess, named briar-rose, had been asleep for a hundred years.”

Max mumbles under his breath, and she pauses, looking up at him. “You aren’t listening.”

“Because it’s about a princess and princesses are boring,” he says with another poke at the jellyfish.

“They are not.”

“ _They are_.”

Her fingers tap impatiently on the page. “Do you want to know how it ends or not?”

Raven pries open a scallop, her golden eyes swiveling from Magda to Max.

Max gives Magda a doubtful look. “How?”

“He wakes her with a kiss and they live happily ever after.”

Max snorts loudly. “They don’t even know each other.”

“It’s a fairy tale,” Magda says, rolling her eyes. “It’s just a story.”

“But it is the _same_ story, _always_. The princess needs rescuing and the prince goes on a quest to save her. They kiss and live _happily ever after_.” He shakes his head. “Who ever heard of saving someone with a kiss?”

Magda peers down at her book, turning the pages slowly. “In some stories a kiss saves no one, sometimes it dooms them. And it isn’t always the princess that needs rescuing. Sometimes it’s the prince.”

Max throws his stick away and falls back heavily in the sand, his limbs sprawling as he stares up at a sky grey with rainclouds. “I never heard a story where a prince got woken up by a kiss.”

Magda grins as she finds what she’s been searching for, holding the book closer as she reads:

‘For many weeks the poor mermaid sat and watched over the dead body of her lover, weeping salt tears over his loss, when suddenly one day their old friend the wolf appeared and said, 'Cover the Prince's body with all the leaves and flowers you can find in the wood.' The maiden did as he told her, and then the wolf breathed over the flowery grave, and, lo and behold! the Prince lay there sleeping as peacefully as a child. 'Now you may wake him if you like,' said the wolf, and the mermaid bent over him and gently kissed the wounds his brothers had made.’

She closes the book with a light thud and sets it down on the sand. “It’s from _The Golden Mermaid_.”

Max pushes himself to his elbows, his brow creasing with confusion. “You said a kiss from one of the merfolk leads to death, so how could a mermaid help save you with one?”

“That’s what I read in the library. Either death or madness. But another book, _Fables and Myths_ I think, had it that their kiss can save you from drowning. Maybe they can save you in other ways too.”

Charles glides his fingertips against his lips and smiles. They are capable of both gifting a human with their own breath or of stealing that same human’s breath away, withering their lungs with a single ravishing kiss.

Max frowns and eyes the sea suspiciously. “I hope I never meet one.”

“I do,” Magda says, tilting her face to a cool and sudden breeze.

_“Why?”_

She smiles at him and shrugs. “Why not?” In his silence her smile stretches wider. “Are you scared?”

“ _No_.” He shoves himself up the rest of the way until he’s sitting cross-legged with his arms folded across his chest. “I’m not scared of anything.”

“You were scared of that snake in the woods last week,” she giggles.

“ _Was not_.”

“It _did_ say you can ward them off with cold iron,” she says. “Merfolk, not snakes. And by ringing a bell -- or was that trolls?”

The water around Charles shivers as he struggles not to laugh. He is no dainty sprite warded away by iron or ringing bells or any other charm humans might think to use against him. His kind have led countless souls to their death, pulling humans straight from their boats if given the chance. Their reputation for malevolence is well-won. Max is right to be afraid.

As though sensing his presence, Max’s gaze flicks toward the rock arch. Charles stiffens, waiting, but Max looks away quickly enough, reaching for his discarded stick and drawing shapes with it in the sand.

“There’s lots more,” Magda says, “but I haven’t read that far yet.”

Max looks up at her, his lips pressed into a flat line. “Papa sings a song about a mermaid to Ruth at bedtime,” he says, dropping his eyes back on the patterns forming in the sand. His tone is casual, but it takes on a hopeful lilt when he asks, “Do you want to hear it?”

Charles moves very slowly, inching closer. Beside him, Raven does the same. There are few things more tempting to his kind than a song.

The smile Magda gives Max is swift and bright. And Max takes a deep, steadying breath before beginning:

 _Ich weiß nicht, was soll es bedeuten,_  
_Daß ich so traurig bin;_  
_Ein Märchen aus alten Zeiten,_  
_Das kommt mir nicht aus dem Sinn._

 _Beautiful_ , Raven says. Charles hums his agreement, Max’s youthful, sweet voice washing over him like a wave.

“You’re very good,” Magda says, after. Tucking her hair behind her ears, she hesitates before asking, “Will you sing it again for me sometime?” His cheeks glowing faintly pink, Max smiles sheepishly and nods.

A cloud passes in front of the sun, darkening the beach, as a soft, steady rain begins to fall. Magda holds out her hand, catching raindrops in her palm, an impish smile creeping onto her face just before she leaps to her feet, shoving Max on her way past him toward the water. He tumbles back on the sand with a yell, then scrambles to his feet, racing after her.

Charles watches them run through the rain, their legs carrying them swiftly across the beach, and flicks his fin, his fingers anxiously kneading the sand. If he had legs --

Their hands join together as they spin in a dizzying circle, faster and faster, then let go, and they fall over in a fit of laughter.

\-- he could play too. And he would be the best, he’s sure. He already outswims all the other merlings of his age. So he knows if he had legs his feet would be quicker than either Magda’s or Max’s and they would name him the winner of all their games.

Thunder starts up, low and rumbling, a storm chasing on the heels of the rain, the rain falling down harder, and the wind picking up, stirring the waters, little waves knocking against Charles and Raven. Magda and Max are soaked to their skin and grimy with sand. At the first crack of lightning Magda shrieks and laughs, Max’s eyes going wide. He grabs Magda’s hand and they dash up the beach, vanishing between the rocks. They’ve forgotten the book. Charles fixates on it, its cloth cover darker from the rain, its golden letters gleaming.

 _Charles_ , Raven says with a smile. He grins back at her and nods before swimming out from behind the rock arch. Stealing is one of their favorite games, and their most favorite things to steal are the things that belong to humans.

If something lay forgotten on the sand, Charles would beach himself to get at it. He’s stolen from rowboats moored along docks, picked the pockets of those drowned by the Sirens, earning an entire hoard of human coins, scoured sunken ships with Raven or with Azazel, hunting for anything that might be useful in their games of make-believe. They have countless human treasures, but one thing they do not have, is a book.

The sea will ruin it, but he knows a safe, dry place to hide it. He calculates the distance between here and what he’s come to think of as  _his_ sea cave where the water laps at a small swath of white sand and the gaping fissure in the rock ceiling lets in the sun or moon.

The rain is pleasantly cool and the sand warm and damp on his scales when he pulls himself eagerly onto the beach and worms his way to his prize. It takes some doing, the ground is slightly sloped and his tail is heavy, but after a few moments of struggle he raises the book in the air for Raven to see, beaming with triumph.

The thunder grumbles louder, the sea rolling up the beach, impatient to welcome him back in. He starts toward it slowly, the task harder now with the use of only one arm, but stops when he hears the wind whispering through the trees behind him, looking over his shoulder to where the rock dissolves into shadows. Somewhere in there, he knows, is a path, his smile flickering as he thinks on how he might never have feet to explore it with.

 _Charles?_ Raven calls. He fixes his smile back in place and wriggles to the water as quick as he can, not sparing another look back.

That night he spins with Raven in a dizzying circle, their hands letting go from each other just as Max and Magda had done. They fly back in the water, laughing, but he knows it is not the same.

 

* * *

 

Five days after what had turned out to be one of the worst storms of the year, singing, melancholic and deep, draws Charles to the surface.

_Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe_   
_Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;_   
_Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,_   
_Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh'._

He recognizes the song for the one Max sung for Magda but Max is not the one who sings it now. This voice is rich and warm, reverberating through Charles down to the tips of his fin.

His hand whips out to capture Raven’s as she swims up beside him, preventing her from straying any closer to the singer in their little boat, pulling her with him into the shadows underneath.

 _Who is he?_ she asks.

Charles knows him by no other name than ‘Papa’. _Max’s father_ , he says.

 _He’s in open water_ , she says. _He should stop._

She is right, of course. Singing at sea is a dangerous thing.

_Ich glaube, die Wellen verschlingen_   
_Am Ende Schiffer und Kahn;_   
_Und das hat mit ihrem Singen_   
_Die Lorelei getan._

_He should_ stop, she says again, more insistently, tugging on his hand to make him look at her then pointing down. He blinks his eyes and finds the shape of someone circling in the murkiness below, closer with each turn; a shark scenting blood in the water.

Charles is only a merling, deadly to a human, but nothing to the adults of his own kind. If this one has decided on taking Max’s father there is little he can do to stop them. And his mother would be furious with him if he tried. His fingers tighten around Raven’s as they come close enough for him to make out the black gleam of their scales.

Above, Max’s father has at least stayed silent reaching the end of his song, drifting in time with the current, unaware of what he’s called up from the depths. Charles is glad when he finally takes up the oars and begins rowing toward shallower waters.

The shadow of his boat passes them over, and Charles holds his breath as the newcomer below hangs suspended, coming no closer. A shuddery sigh of relief escaping him when, after a tensely drawn-out moment, they mercifully shrink back into the gloom.

 

* * *

 

Above the grotto, darting in and out of moonlight beams and between seaweed thick as curtains, Charles chases after Raven. While below, his mother and a band of her consorts loll on rocks polished smooth, lazy and drunk on stolen honeyed wine.

He hisses at Raven, his quick fingers reaching out from the seaweed to snatch at her fin. She shrieks and somersaults, pulling herself free, zooming fast over the top of his head and disappearing into the vegetation.

He follows after her, carefully prying apart the seaweed. She giggles once, loud and short, the sound seeming to come from everywhere at once, echoing off the rock. From the corner of his eye he catches a blur of something in the moonlight. The back of his neck prickles. He has become the prey now. _Raven?_ he calls softly.

 _Have you heard him carrying on up above?_ A haughty voice asks from below.

Charles glances down in puzzlement, mistaken for a moment that they mean him. His lapse in attention costs him the game.

Raven shoots out at him from the seaweed, catching him hard around his middle, rolling with him until he’s pinned on his belly against the rock wall, her needle-sharp teeth grazing the back of his neck in a mock-bite. _Give up?_ she asks. He can feel her smile on his fine scales.

 _Yes_ , he laughs. _You win. I give up._

 _How he calls for us?_ Another voice asks. _It’s pathetic._

Raven lets him away from the rock and he twists around, the two of them looking down on their mother and her companions together.

The merfolk in the grotto have decorated themselves with human treasures uncovered during the storm, pearls dripping from their throats and golden, jeweled bangles clinking together on their wrists; shiny bright playthings they’ll toy with for a time before discarding. Only the Oracle remains unadorned, but even so, she still glitters diamond-bright, her scales a frosty white and her translucent fins veined with the palest blue.

Years ago, she had come to their home in the North Sea from the Arctic, where Charles has heard narwhals slice through the waves with their spiraled horns and polar bears roam across land that shimmers like cut glass, welcomed in graciously by his mother for her talents as an Oracle; prized among his kind for their abilities of deciphering, influencing, and foretelling, and as a Siren, who are the deadliest and most beautiful of them, able to convince even the most stouthearted of men that it is wonderful to die.

 _I’m rather surprised he hasn’t learned his lesson yet_ , a gleaming, black-scaled merman says, his mouth curving into a sharp grin as he twirls a strand of pearls around one finger. _He cursed us, and fears us, and yet --_ and yet _, he cannot stay away._

 _Perhaps he wishes to join us after all_ , their mother says.

 _He_ did _return to us what is ours, I suppose_ , the merman says. _For that, should we not offer him a gift?_

His words earn a laugh from the majority of them. Charles and Raven exchange a look. Any gift of theirs is more often a curse. Raven loops her arms around his neck as he descends into their midst, leaning forward on his shoulders and whispering, _They are talking about Max’s father._ When he nods, she asks, _What did he return?_

 _One of the hunters was killed during the storm_ , he murmurs. _And her body was thrown to the shore. He gave her back to the water._

 _Perhaps he believes we are angered by the death of one of our own, and is afraid of what we might do_ , a mermaid says from her rock ledge perch, her pectoral fins nearly as long as her silvery tail, fanning out like a butterfly koi’s. _Perhaps he is hoping to appease us with his song._

 _He knows better than that_ , the merman chuckles with a knowing look for Charles’s mother.

 _Why then?_ Charles asks him. _Why does he sing?_

 _For one last look, I believe_ , the merman says.

_Of us?_

The merman nods. _But not just any of us_ , he says, pointing to the Oracle. _Her._

 _They do not know the story_ , their mother says, giving Charles and Raven a lopsided smile, her voice syrupy from the wine. _You must tell it to them._

 _Yes_ , the merman says, _do tell the story of poor Joseph again._

 _Jakob_ , the Oracle corrects. _His name is Jakob._

Their mother beckons them closer with a slender finger, drawing them up onto her rock once they’re in reach, cuddling Raven in close to her side and petting Charles’s wavy hair fondly. From across the grotto the Oracle regards them with her glittering eyes.

 _Poor_ Jakob _then_ , the merman says. _It really does not matter so long as you get on with the story while we’re still young._

There is an entire hollow filled with human bones. Charles had crept away to see it once with Azazel, the bones glowing white under the soft touch of the moon. _Humans are the Sirens’ playthings_ , Azazel told him, grinning ghoulishly, _and when they are finished playing with them, here is where they discard them._ He remembers this now as he’s compelled to look into the Oracle’s eyes, the grotto blurring at the edges as she draws them all into her memory, a proud smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she leans against the wall of rock behind her and begins. _He was beautiful when he was young, and I wanted him for my own._ And he sees her as she was years before, her tail curled beneath her as she sits gracefully in a tide pool, her white-blonde hair hanging in a wet curtain down her back, water droplets made incandescent beading on her pale breasts as the sunset behind her turns the sea and her body to silver-gold.

She looks vulnerable so exposed and without the sea to hide her; innocent and benign, though Charles knows she is anything but.

 _You could often hear him singing in those days_ , she says, her voice pouring clear and smooth into all their minds. _He sings beautifully. And one night, at sundown, I decided I would meet him._

And then Charles sees Max’s father when he was still very young, not a single strand of grey anywhere in his auburn hair glinting in the light, his beard much shorter then than it is now, his broad shoulders straight and proud, not yet slumped with the weight of all his cares.

The Oracle’s eyes move with him as he walks slowly along the beach, oblivious to her presence as he sings that same lamenting song. The moment he notices her, she smiles up at him sweetly and does her best to look helpless, and his song sticks in his throat as he gapes back at her like he doesn’t trust that she’s real. His feet stop just shy of her reach, his eyes wide and staring before he suddenly seems to remember himself and quickly averts his gaze from her naked form, the tips of his ears reddening. “Forgive me, Miss,” he stammers. “I didn’t mean to stare.”

“That’s alright,” she says, in a voice that’s brazen and perfectly human, “I wanted to hear you sing.”

He lifts his eyes from the sand, a slow, uncertain smile edging onto his face. “You’ve been listening to my singing?” When she nods, he asks, “What’s your name?”

She hesitates, then answers, “Emma.”

“Emma,” he repeats breathily, smiling brighter. “I’m Jakob.” 

“Please, Jakob,” she says, tilting her head, her hair cascading over one shoulder, “will you help me?”

“Of course. What can I do?”

“I’m afraid I’ve gotten myself stranded in this tide pool,” she says, “and I really must get back to the water. But it is so far now and the rocks are so sharp.” She holds her arms out to him, her tail uncurling.

“You want me to carry you?” he asks, looking down at her flowing, opaque fin as it unfurls before his feet with a wet slap.

“Please.”

She shivers at the touch of his hands, pressing a soft sound against his neck, breathing in the warm scent of him as he bends and slides his arms beneath her. That she’s almost too heavy for him to lift is made obvious in the way his knees buckle and his arms tremble as he struggles to stand, but he plasters on a smile and tries not to let it show on his face, tightening his hold on her, her fin dragging over the rocks as his feet stumble toward the water.

 _His kindness and his willingness to help only made me desire him more_ , the Oracle says. _And once we were together in the sea, I had no plans of letting him go._

The water rolls up to Jakob’s ankles, then his knees, then his waist, the Oracle’s tail curling around him like a conger’s as she stares into his eyes and fills his head with all the promises of the sea.

Laughter rises up from the grotto as her audience anticipates the moment when wonder abandons Jakob and fear sets in instead, his face paling as he realizes he cannot set her down, she’s wound herself too tightly around him.

 _I wanted to know_ , the Oracle says, _what his thoughts were in that moment when he realized he would never touch land again. And when I looked, he was thinking about a girl he loved quite desperately, and how he never got the chance to tell her._

The memory retreats like water from the sand, dropping Charles back into the moonlit grotto, confused as to what happened. _What did you do to him?_ he asks softly. Jakob was alive still. So either he escaped her somehow, which was doubtful, or --

 _I let him go_ , the Oracle says. Charles can tell by her voice it was the first and last time she had ever done such a thing.

 _You pitied him_ , the black-scaled merman says, an amused glint in his eyes.

 _No_ , she says. _He was beautiful and kind and in love._

 _Sentimental Emma_ , the merman chuckles, shaking his head. _Did you know the name was given to her by a human lover? As I recall, that man wasn’t so lucky._

 _That’s enough from you_ , the Oracle says, flicking her fin in warning, and the merman holds his hands up in a sign of deference that’s belied by the flash of a grin.

Somewhere during the Oracle’s story, Charles’s mother fell asleep, curled up on her side with Raven tucked under one arm, her hair veiling half her face. Charles smooths it back as Raven carefully disentangles herself. A few of the others are asleep too, lulled by the wine, sprawled languidly on their rocks or with their tails curled around themselves, murmuring softly as they dream. Those still awake yawn and lazily stretch before drifting up out of the grotto, seeking out more comfortable beds, the black-scaled merman the last to go, still chuckling quietly to himself, and then only Charles, Raven, and the Oracle remain.

 _Raven, we should go_ , Charles whispers.

 _No_ , the Oracle says. _Come closer._ It’s Raven she’s looking at as they swim into her reach. And Raven she reaches for, touching the tattered feather still caught up in her hair. _You wish to ask me something._

 _I’ve heard you can foresee the future_ , Raven says.

The Oracle smiles. _Sometimes._

Raven throws Charles an anxious glance, then asks, _I was wondering if you knew whether or not I’ll -- if_ we _will ever get to visit the world above?_

 _Raven_ , Charles hisses. No one can know they spend their days listening to human stories, or worse yet, that they sometimes pretend they _are human_ and plot out all the ways they might leave the sea and all the things they might do once on land. His mother doesn’t keep a close eye on them and just assumes they are always nearby, but if Raven lets it slip to the Oracle and the Oracle tells their father about what they get up to, where they sneak off to --

 _Ssssh_ , the Oracle hushes his thoughts, and threads her fingers soothingly into his hair. _You are thinking much too loudly._ Withdrawing her hand, she regards them both carefully. _Understand_ , she says slowly, _those who venture above, do not have a habit of coming back._

 _They like land better_ , Raven says, but the Oracle shakes her head.

 _We become vulnerable on land. And there is danger and sickness at every turn._ Her gaze slides from Raven to Charles, a strange glimmer in her eyes as she says, _And any human you might think to trust, will betray you. No, it is best if you put these desires out of your head, and stay where you are loved and your people can keep you safe._

 

* * *

 

“What about the one with the faun?” Magda asks.

Charles loves the one with the faun. It makes him itch for legs to dance with around a snapping, hissing flame.

“You’ve told me that one a dozen times already,” Max says.

Charles glares at him.

“Hmm. _Die Wichtelmänner_ _, then.”_

Charles is certain he hasn’t heard this one yet, and even though he would much rather hear about the faun again, he rests his chin on his crossed arms and waits for Magda to begin.

“A certain mother had her child taken out of its cradle by the elves, and a changeling with a large head and staring eyes, which would do nothing but eat and drink, lay in its place.”

“Wait, I think I’ve heard this already,” Max says.

Charles flicks his fin irritably, and nearly throws a cockle shell at him.

“Max, don’t interrupt. In her trouble she went to her neighbor, and asked her advice. The neighbor said that she was to carry the changeling into the kitchen, set it down on the hearth, light a fire, and boil some water in two egg-shells, which would make the changeling laugh, and if he laughed, all would be over with him.”

Max shifts around on the sand, reaching into his pocket and pulling out something that shines under the afternoon sun.

“The woman did everything that her neighbor bade her.” Magda pushes herself up from the sand and leans in closer over the thing in Max’s hand, a brilliant smile on her lips. “When she put the egg-shells with water on the fire, Goggle-eyes said, "I am as old now as the Wester Forest, but never yet have I seen anyone boil anything in an egg-shell." And he began to laugh at it. Whilst he was laughing, suddenly came a host of little elves, who brought the right child, set it down on the hearth, and took the changeling away with them.”

The shining thing lifts away from Max’s hand on its own, Charles’s eyes going round as saucers, unable to focus on anything else. He almost reveals himself trying to get a closer look, only remembering to stay behind the rocks at the last second.

The thing swings around in the air, flashing as the sun catches it, and Charles sees it’s a key. He can’t help the short, happy sound, like a dolphin’s click, that leaves his open mouth when it turns to liquid and begins remaking itself into something new.

Minutes later, a necklace of braided metal strands settles into Max’s waiting hand. He flushes as he offers it to Magda, who smiles and kisses his cheek, and Charles realizes it isn’t the key at all that’s special. It’s Max.

 

* * *

 

“Papa gave it to me,” Max announces proudly, holding out a gold pocket watch for Magda to see, its case glowing in his hand as the sun washes over it.

 _Watch_ , Charles tells Azazel, shaking his arm to wake him up. _Just watch now, you’ll see._

 _I have been_ , Azazel groans, batting away his hand. _He hasn’t done anything all morning._

 _He can do things_ , Charles says, _that I’ve never seen another human do._

Max pockets his new watch, and Azazel turns a frown onto Charles. _I want to go_ , he says, _the tide is ebbing, and this is boring._

_I’m telling you, I watched him turn a key into a necklace._

_You’ve been in the sun too long._

_I have not._

_And been listening to too many children’s stories. It’s not good for you._

Charles shakes his head and leans forward, peering back through the arch just as Magda says, “Bet I can swim farther than you.”

“You cannot,” Max says.

“See that little islet there,” she says, pointing. “I bet I can swim to that and make it back here before you even go halfway.”

A grin curls Max’s lips just before he goes tearing across the sand and rocks, and with a yell, throws himself into the sea. He looks back at Magda when he surfaces, the grin still bright on his face, then dives beneath a wave.

 _“You’re a horrible cheat! I didn’t say go yet!”_ Magda cries, chasing after him.

Charles faces into the sea to watch him, and at his side, Azazel sits up straighter, the most interested he’s been all day. _The boy’s going to drown_ , he says.

Charles’s face scrunches up with confusion. _What?_

_He just went into the current. Look how it’s dragging him in._

Max bobs to the surface again, much farther out than he should be, whisked seaward as if caught in a river, his eyes wide with panic as a wave rolls him under and out of sight.

 _Max_ , Charles says, his voice breathless and strained. Off to his right, waist-deep in the water, Magda screams.

Azazel turns to him, warning, _Don’t_ , but he’s already slipped beneath the waves.

Max has his eyes closed tight and his mouth open as if to drink the entire sea when Charles catches him, pulling him close as he slices through the current. Max thrashes with terror at the touch of scales on his skin, and Charles has to pin his arms to his sides to keep him still.

The golden watch leaves his pocket, floating, shimmering and hypnotic, before it sinks.

Charles watches it go, his fingers itching to grab it. He tightens his grip on Max instead. And then he does what Azazel warned him against. He kisses Max. And pours his breath into Max’s aching lungs.

It’s the first time he’s ever kissed anyone. He doesn’t know what he was expecting to feel, but it is not this lightness bubbling up inside him or the warmth that spreads over his scales in the places where Max’s body touches his. A sound he’s never heard himself make tumbles out of his lips and into Max’s mouth, his eyes fluttering closed a moment before he forces them back open, remembering his purpose.

With Max’s fingers grasping loosely at his sides, he swims with him toward shore, letting images of all his favorite places into Max’s mind to calm him: his own grotto filled with moonbeams, the warm, crystal waters his mother migrates to during the winter, the deep, azure cove he haunts with Azazel, his sea cave with its own white ribbon of sand.

Max’s eyes crack open a fraction, and Charles smiles against his lips. _Hullo, Max._ The sunlight overhead is dancing over the water, dazzlingly bright when he throws him to the surface.

 

* * *

 

Azazel has a bad habit of revealing himself to humans. Mostly to terrorize them, but still. His own name had been given to him by a cleric, who, after sighting him along a riverbank, his scales a deep blood-red and barbs running from the back of his neck to partway down his tail, had screamed the name out, crossed himself, and fled back the way he’d come. Azazel was delighted. Since then he’s taken to referring to himself as the Devil of the Sea.

Charles reminds himself of this, and plans to remind Azazel of it too, should he bother criticizing Charles for what he’s done.

He lifts his eyes above water, peering up at Azazel where he’s lying in a patch of sunlight on the far beach of the islet Max didn’t make it to, his sleek and sinewy body curled in a semicircle, his tail partly submerged in the shallows, his fin drifting slowly back and forth.

 _You kissed a human_ , he says, as Charles pushes himself up onto his hands, his shadow falling down Azazel’s front. _What would your mother say if she caught her precious merling kissing humans?_

 _He was drowning_ , Charles says.

_So?_

_So -- I do not want him to drown._

_Why? Not because he can turn a necklace into a key or whatever it is you say he can do?_ When Charles looks away and doesn’t answer, his eyes widen with shock. _You like that human._

_I do not._

_You do. I can see it on your face._

Charles shakes his head. _If he drowns, I won’t get to hear his stories anymore. That’s all I care about._

Azazel smirks, his fingers tiptoeing over Charles’s hand and up his arm. _I don’t believe you._

 _Kisses_ , Charles says, holding Azazel’s gaze, _mean nothing._

Azazel draws something in the gritty sand caked over the faint scaling on his skin, and when Charles looks down, he sees he’s been marked with the letter A. _Kiss me, then_ , Azazel says, watching his face.

Charles doesn’t hesitate, leaning forward and pressing his lips quickly to Azazel’s.

Azazel blinks at him, surprised he actually did it, and then laughs. _That was horrible._ Charles considers biting him. _You kissed your human far better than that._

Charles scowls and flops down on his belly, laying his cheek against one arm.

 _Oh, come on_ , Azazel says, his fingers sweeping over the bony prominent of Charles’s shoulder, _don’t be angry._

_I’m not._

_If you want to go around kissing humans, then who am I to stop you?_

_Did you really expect me to let him drown?_

_No_ , Azazel says, after thinking it over for a moment. _I knew you wouldn’t._

_I was telling the truth. He can do things. I saw him._

Azazel snorts. _I’m sure he can. Humans are always doing things. It is most annoying._

 _I wish I could do human things_ _\-- Azazel, don’t laugh at me._

_I wasn’t. If you’re so bent on land, then why not ask me? I know how you can get legs._

Charles rolls his eyes. _You do not._

 _I do_ , Azazel says. _Though I’m sure you don’t have the stomach for it._

 _You don’t_ , Charles says, twisting over onto his back, _or you would have told me already._

Azazel considers him, a faint smile playing on his lips as he plucks a strand of seaweed from Charles’s hair. _If you say so._ His eyes slide down to the closed hand Charles has thrown across his chest. _What is that?_

Charles gives a smile of his own, holding up his fisted hand, uncurling his fingers one by one, and dangles Max’s gold pocket watch by its chain.

 

* * *

 

With his cheek propped against his fist, Charles listens to Max playing an instrument that breathes like a living thing, sighing its notes into the chilly air, swelling, then collapsing into itself, and then swelling again, a slow undulation like the waves of the sea. He has his sister with him today instead of Magda, the lonely sound of his playing enfolding himself and her and Charles together, until it seems as though they’re the last three creatures alive. The world is grey and ended. The sea and sky blended into each other, the same sullen overcast shade.

“Will you play with me?” Ruth asks, tugging Max’s shirtsleeve. The breathing thing falls silent. Max stares miserably out at the sea. “Max, play with me.” A demand this time.

“No,” Max says. “Leave me alone or I’ll take you back to the house.”

He goes back to playing, staring at nothing Charles can see. Ruth wanders away from him, further than Charles thinks she should. She is so small. If she were a merling, she’d never be allowed to go off on her own. 

She picks up shell after shell, dropping each one the moment she spots another. A little ways down the beach, she turns suddenly, spying him along the shore, her expression unreadable while she decides how to feel about him. He grins at her and flicks his fin, splashing water up onto the dry sand.

It’s a mistake. She grins back and starts toward him. No, he thinks, go back to your brother. He can’t let her into the water. She doesn’t have gills to breathe with. He finds a shell under his fingers and throws it, hard as he can, back toward Max, and when she turns to look after it, he sinks without a sound.

 

* * *

 

He finds Magda all alone on the beach, her knees drawn to her chest as she looks out at the sea and cries.

He doesn’t know what’s wrong. He thinks of gaining her attention, of revealing himself from behind the rock arch, but keeps losing his nerve.

With the sun sinking, she stands, washed red in the fading light, gazing at nothing for the longest time. And just when Charles thinks she has turned to stone, she inhales raggedly, an awful sound leaving her as she stoops down, grabbing up rocks and shells, and in a rage, begins hurling them into the sea.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter dedicated to [Mikanskey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikanskey/pseuds/Mikanskey) just because. ❤  
> (P.S. @Mikanskey, this is not The Thing ;)) 
> 
> For warnings see the notes at the end of the chapter.

“ _Once upon a time_ ,” Magda whispers in Erik’s ear, but he can’t see her. He can’t see anything. He hears the wind, the ocean waves, the clanging radiator _and her voice_ , which does not belong. Panic swells within him as he stumbles around in the dark trying to find her.

“ _A man_ , _lost in the world_ , _came upon a glimmer of light shining in the darkness_ , _and following it through the gloom_ , _found himself standing beside a long_ _glass coffin_.”

There is only an endless nothing surrounding Erik. He is alone with himself and the ghost of the girl he once loved, but her voice carries power and with her words she weaves together a gleaming coffin from out of the emptiness.

Erik has dreamed this dream before and knows inside the glass coffin he will find a maiden, _his maiden_ , one buried away carefully beneath foggy layers of memory. He will release the bolt and lift the lid and she will rise from her death sleep, step out, and tell him a story. And then another and another. _Rotkäppchen_ , _Die Wichtelmänner_ , _Der Froschkönig_. As many times as he asks. Again and again.

But when he looks inside, placing a hand against the coffin, its crystal pane cold on his skin, he finds not her, but one of _them_ , lying either ill or dead, its scales washed out and peeling.

 _“Why would you show me this?”_ he demands of the empty air, getting no answer in reply. Alive or dead, merfolk are bad omens. He learned that lesson years ago.

He takes a step back, trying with all his might to look away but an unnamable force holds him fast. A voice whispers like the wind through brittle leaves. Two words floating to the surface of his mind. _Open it._

“ _No_ ,” Erik whispers as the creature’s eyes slide open, piercingly blue and frighteningly alive.

Nothing good will come from opening the lid, but with the tip of one finger the creature tap-tap-taps at the glass, beckoning Erik closer, and against his will, unable to do anything but obey, he releases the bolt and lifts the lid.

He comes to in a panic, rolling off the side of the bed, landing hard in a blanket-tangled heap of limbs on the cold floor. The wrought iron bedframe creaks as he struggles against the blankets coiled around his legs. He stills, realizing where he is, his heart pounding as he forces himself to breathe.

The radiator rattles and clinks.

He feels like a fool.

Above him, the swing window sways gently back and forth.

Tap… Tap… Tap…

He untangles himself and shoves up off the floor, throwing a murderous look to the window, latching it closed.

Through the glass, under the sickly pale moon, he watches the black water roll with sleep-bleary eyes and sweeps outward through his cottage, lingering over every bolt and nail.

His cottage is pitch dark. One moment passes. Then another. He runs a weary hand over his face and gathers his blankets from the floor. He’s halfway beneath them when the cold, creeping sensation of being watched crawls over him.

He freezes, goosebumps pebbling his skin, each hair standing on end. He sweeps through the cottage, past its walls, and into the woods. There’s an old tin can buried and rusted under a bed of pine needles. A bottle cap abandoned along an overgrown path. A blunted bent nail driven into the trunk of a tree. All of it corroding. All of it forgotten and left unmoved for years. None of it any interest to him.

It’s quiet when he lets himself outside, revolver in one hand, flashlight in the other, the only sound the waves down below. A damp chill closes in on him, gripping him through the layer of his sweatshirt. He rounds the corner of his cottage, mist clinging to the spongy ground and swirling between the towering trees, and is swallowed by shadows, the beam of his flashlight cutting weakly through the dark.

Beyond the heavy, draping pine boughs there is a hush, the low roar of the sea dampened. His sneakered feet pass silently over a carpet of pine needles. He hears the inconsequential scurrying of mice and shrews. The rustle of roosting birds. Crickets chirping.

Nothing else moves.

But he knows what he felt. He isn’t wrong. He has an unfortunate penchant for being right.

With his back to a tree, he clicks off his flashlight, throwing himself into darkness. His thoughts run toward the mangled girl on the beach. He does nothing but breathe the pine scented air and wait.

The seconds tick away, turning into minutes. And then…

A stick snaps somewhere to his right. He flinches, his flashlight clicking on, swinging toward the sound as an eerie vacuum of silence opens around him. Long, spindly shadows reach, crisscrossing every which way under the light, his fingers clenching tighter on the grip of his gun, the tempo of his heartbeat jumping in its pace.

He strains his eyes, picking out the outline of something big poised still as death beneath a drooping curtain of hemlock.

He moves his foot, just a single step, and it explodes from its hiding place.

His feet send him backward, his heart in his throat as it leaps swiftly past, branches clacking, swaying to and fro.

A deer. His flashlight lands at his feet as he hunches over, panting raggedly. Just a deer.

It’s only a moment later he jerks his head up at the sound of crashing in the brush and the deer’s sudden sharp bleat.

A rumbling growl reaches his ears from somewhere away in the dark. Any other time he would brush it off as a mountain lion but there’s something off in the growl. Not enough animal in it. Not enough human either.

There’s the sound of something heavy hitting the ground. Sticks breaking. The sound of something being dragged. The deer bleats again, further away now.

He’s breathing too loud. His heartbeat refuses to slow. His grip on his gun doesn’t loosen. With a suspecting grimace he picks up his flashlight and walks slowly after the sound.

He follows a path of flattened ferns and smeared blood, knowing in his gut what he’s going to find but even so the shock of it isn’t lessened.

He feels too exposed, his flashlight laying a circle of light at his feet as he watches Victor wrestle with the deer, those damnable claws of his sunk in deep.

The deer wheezes and kicks, its eyes large and panicked. Slashes gouge its throat and sides, blood spreading down its neck. Erik feels a pang in his chest. It’s a young deer, its antlers short and velvety, just starting to grow in.

Victor snaps its neck.

The metallic tang of blood hangs heavy in the air but even so Victor inclines his head toward Erik and inhales deeply. Logan told him once fear has a scent. A taste. One that he doesn’t care for. Victor however, relishes it.

“Trouble sleeping, Lehnsherr?” Victor growls. His smile is stained red.

Erik wants to fire off a round into him just for the hell of it. Victor has a regenerative healing factor. He can take it. Shit, he _deserves_ it. He’s an asshole. A dick. A fucking shithead.

Victor’s smile grows sharper under Erik’s stare. He unfolds from his crouch, rising to his full height.

They’re right behind Erik’s cottage. If left, the deer will stink and call in bear or wolves or maybe even Sean’s verdammt mountain lion.

But Victor’s gotten what he wanted; Erik’s discomfort and a struggle that ended bloody. He leaves Erik to deal with the dead deer, chuckling softly, giving Erik a pat on the cheek as he passes, Erik holding rigidly still as Victor’s warm, wet claws graze his skin.

He swipes at his cheek with his sleeve, blood-streak staining the fabric when he pulls it away, and watches Victor leave the woods, bounding away on all fours like an animal, bloody handprints in his wake.

Erik considers shooting him again, but he never was one for hitting someone in the back.

As gruesome as it is, as disturbing as it is, Victor does shit like this from time to time. If not to Erik, then to someone else. Sean usually. Or Moira. It’s how he gets his entertainment. Sometimes, like tonight, just to piss Erik off, he won’t carry anything metal on himself. _All the better to slip up behind you_ , he says, grinning at Erik with all his sharp teeth like the wolf from that old story.

Despite knowing now he’s alone, Erik gives the woods one final sweep with his flashlight. Only evergreens and birch. His beam finds the twisted deer. He swears softly. He’ll deal with it in the morning.

 

* * *

 

“Victor killed a deer outside my house last night,” Erik says, maneuvering his fishing boat around until he’s parallel with Logan’s lighter cedar strip guide boat.

A wall of fog stands between them and shore, blotting from view the granite island Logan’s moored beside, turning the hardy patch of conifers clinging to its lumpy face hazy.

It’s terrible fishing weather by some measures. Boating is more dangerous, the shore lost from view and the maze of granite islands not appearing from the fog until they’re mere yards away, but the diluted light brings bigger fish to the surface and the top-bites are nearly always worth it. Regardless, Erik is a living compass and Logan is, well, Logan.

He grunts at Erik in acknowledgment, his eyes closed in a half-doze, fishing rod held loose in his hands.

“Looked like a goddamn animal,” Erik says, lowering the light of his kerosene lantern. “Butchered it. Then left it for me to clean up.”

An osprey whistles overhead in the dark morning air. Erik feels his wire fish basket snag and pushes back his coat sleeve, reaching a hand into the cold murky water to unhook it. He’s floating just over a kelp bed, his fingers brushing slimy, rubbery leaves.

“Too much prey-drive,” Logan says eventually. He rolls his shoulders stiffly, a joint popping. “I’ll take care of it.”

“I already did,” Erik says darkly, withdrawing his hand from the water. He gives a derisive snort. “He was trying to scare me.”

Logan is quiet for a long time. The water laps at the granite, at a twist of bone-white driftwood jutting from the water’s surface, at the side of Erik’s dark cedar boat. In the silence Erik pats the front of his down vest inside his coat, finding his favorite topwater lure and begins baiting his line.

“I remember,” Logan says suddenly, “years ago, when I was young.”

Erik glances up from the hook in his fingers. “You were young? Thought you’d been an old man all your life.”

“Try not to be a smartass, Lehnsherr,” Logan says. “Yes, I was young -- though I’ll admit it’s been a while.” A tug on his line quiets him, one eye cracking open. The line buzzes out slowly at first, then faster, one yard after another but he stays calmly put, his booted feet propped on the center seat. It’s only when the fish stops running that he lowers his boots and begins slowly reeling in the slack, lifting the rod tip, lowering it and reeling, lifting again.

Bit by bit Erik watches him haul in a heavy striper, his own fishing rod resting idle in the bottom of his boat.

“You’re gonna need to catch two of these, two haddock and a mackerel if you want to outdo me today,” Logan says, smug.

“MacTaggert’s going to _love_ you,” Erik says. Most of the fish they catch they take back to Moira to serve at the Inn.

Logan grunts a laugh. “She’ll just make Cassidy clean ‘em,” he says, unhooking the striper, hauling up his wire basket and tossing it in. “Now, where was I?”

“You were just about to reminisce on your glory days,” Erik says.

“Kids,” Logan mutters as he recasts his line near the shore of the granite island. Erik watches the lure sail through the air and disappear into the fog. Logan props his boots back up and leans into his seat. “So, a week before my father died Victor lured me into the woods.”

“Interesting choice of words,” Erik says.

“He killed a fox in front of me,” Logan says, closing his eyes. “I didn’t want him to. Begged him not to -- I was _really_ young. I never forgot the way it screamed.”

The osprey circles above them again, cutting the air with its shrill whistled cry.

“I asked him why. And all he’d tell me was, _“quod sum eris.”_

Erik narrows his eyes, wracking his brain. “Latin?”

Logan nods. “Used to see it on old gravestones. Years ago.”

“What’s it mean?”

“I am what you will be,” Logan says. “Something along those lines.” He lifts a hand and his claws slowly reveal themselves. “Week later I had these.”

“He knew,” Erik says.

“I wanted to hate him,” Logan says, “but I just -- couldn’t. He was the only one that understood me -- after my father died.”

The water gently rocks Erik’s boat in the silence. Eventually Logan feels his stare and opens his eyes.

“You think he did it, don’t you?” Logan says. “Murdered that girl.”

Erik doesn’t say a word.

“In all these years,” Logan says, “Victor’s never killed anyone. Not in cold blood.”

How can you be sure? It’s right there on the tip of Erik’s tongue, but still, he doesn’t say a word.

“He gets like this,” Logan says, “when he’s feeling cornered. He punishes you for it. That’s what he was doing that day in the woods with the fox. He told me something I didn’t want to believe. And he punished me for it.”

“What did he tell you?”

Logan gives him a look. “Do I show up in your fishing-hole and bother you with questions? No. The point is, my sonofabitch brother’s angry and he’s making damn sure we all know it.”

“Something happened with him, didn’t it,” Erik says. “That’s why you’re sitting out here.”

“Questions, Lehnsherr,” Logan growls.

Erik rakes a hand through his hair. “Right.” He lets a minute pass. Then another before asking, “You find anything out about Rumford?”

“His story checks out,” Logan grunts. And that’s the end of it.

Erik takes up his paddles, putting some space between him and Logan before casting his line. He moors himself near the other side of the island where the shore is a sheer drop straight down into the water, towering spires of wild lupine swaying above him in sprays of purples and pinks, the colors dulled in the fog.

He closes his eyes and waits for the telltale pull on his line, replaying the events from the night. It’s all too easy imagining the murdered girl in place of the deer. Too easy to see her running through the woods while Victor chases after her on all fours. It’s harder imagining Victor’s never killed in cold blood.

Erik’s hands aren’t clean by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s never killed an innocent girl. It’s on this thought that his mind starts circling dangerously around Magda and he’s thankful for the distraction when he hears a resounding _SMACK_ and feels a sudden sharp jerk on his line just before it goes screeching from the reel.

His fishing rod doubles over, yards of braid disappearing into the fog as the fish digs toward the bottom close to the granite island’s shore.

Whatever he’s hooked, it’s big. Adult striped bass can reach up to 69 pounds. A vicious grin curls his lips. It feels like a trophy striper, the kind Sean would demand taxidermied and throw up on the Inn wall where Logan would be forced to look at it day in and day out.

He buckles down the drag and slowly works to reel it in. “Howlett!” he calls out, laughing. “I’ve got something big over here!” He lets it run with his line, then reels it in, lets it run and reels it in a little more before tightening the drag again. It surfaces just a few yards away, rolling in the water, showing him its silver-white belly.

“I hope it’s a shark!” Logan calls back, rowing Erik’s way.

Erik’s fishing rod is bent nearly to snapping, his boat pitched precariously to one side when he finally hauls the striper in.

It’s got good girth and has clearly been eating well, looking to Erik to be around 38 inches long and maybe 25 pounds. It’s not the trophy he was hoping for but it’s bigger than anything Logan’s caught today.

He leans halfway out his boat, the boat pitching even further to its side, and grips the striper by its bottom lip, setting his fishing rod down in the boat before carefully working his hook from the striper’s jaw. It’s far too big for his wire basket, he’ll have to bring it on his boat.

“Lehnsherr!” Logan calls into the fog, the slap of his paddles growing nearer, the diffuse light of his kerosene lantern barely visible. “You all right?”

Erik has a smug reply ready to go and both hands in the water to ease the striper in, the reply dying on his tongue when the fish jerks backward hard, nearly tipping him in.

He inhales sharply, pulled in up to his elbows, his coat sleeves soaked instantly through, slimy kelp brushing his skin. He manages to keep the striper just seconds longer before it’s snatched from his hands.

He jerks back with a bitten off cry, his boat heaving violently side to side.

“What is it!?” Logan calls. “What happened!?”

Erik’s heart races in his chest, his breath short and fast. _Fingers._ He felt fingers scraping his.

“Nothing,” he gasps, looking down into the murky water where his own distorted face stares up at him. “I lost it.”

“Jesus, Lehnsherr,” Logan says. “All that over a fish?”

“It nearly took me in,” Erik says, wracking his brain quickly for an explanation. _Any_ explanation but the one he keeps circling back to. His mind playing tricks on him? _Someone else_ playing a trick on him? He seizes on that little scrap of hope like a dog worrying a bone. “Where’s Muñoz?”

“Muñoz?” Logan says. “Why?”

Erik twists in his boat, trying and failing to see through the fog. “Adaptive mutation right? He can grow gills.”

Logan barks a laugh. “That big of a monster, huh? You hoping he’ll go in after it for you?”

Erik takes up his paddles and choppily turns himself around.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Logan chuckles, his boat drifting up alongside Erik’s. “I’ll let you have one of mine. Let you tell everyone you landed it and everything.” He leans over the side of his boat, dragging up his wire basket.

Not more than three yards away, Erik spots it; the hump of a tail in the water like a verdammt sea monster, a blur of spines and mottled blue scales, there and gone in an instant.

“Here you go.” Logan grins at him, holding out the smallest mackerel Erik’s ever seen. Something must show on his face because Logan’s grin falls off in an instant. “Are you okay?”

No, he thinks. The absurdity of his night has stretched into the daylight, his nightmares spilling out into the open. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, but I don’t feel well. I’m going to head in.”

Logan mercifully doesn’t question him or give him any more ribbing and he’s able to unmoor himself quickly and take himself back to shore.

He’s barely set foot on the dock, the image of those spines jutting from the water swimming behind his eyelids when Bolivar finds him.

“I’m a little busy,” Erik says, shrugging out of his soaked coat and hitching his boat to its piling.

“Erik,” Bolivar says, his expression purposeful, “I’ve offended you.”

Erik arches an eyebrow, looping his rope once more around the piling.

“I think I know how,” Bolivar says. “And I’m sorry.” He folds his arms over his chest, his gaze cutting anxiously away from Erik’s face to Erik’s hands tying a knot in the rope. “I realize, after thinking it over, that there are certain similarities to what I said and what _was_ said, in the past about – about –”

“Mutants,” Erik says flatly, giving the rope a firm tug, making sure it’s secure.

Bolivar exhales heavily. “Yes. Mutants. I’m sorry. I honestly don’t know what I was thinking but I swear I meant nothing by it.”

Erik doesn’t know what to say to that. He’s been apologized to only once before. He didn’t accept that person’s apology. He drove a coin through their skull.

“I’d like to make it up to you,” Bolivar says. “If you’ll let me. Maybe buy you breakfast?” He looks up at Erik, his brow knitting with what appears to be genuine concern. “You look like you could use something warm.”

Erik’s having a fever dream maybe. He wouldn’t put it past himself.

“I feel terrible about the whole thing,” Bolivar says. “Really I do.”

Erik already intends on going to the Inn. Despite part of him wanting to be left alone to process what he just saw in the water, he’s hopeful the warmth and familiarity will ease his anxiety and help him feel more grounded. Plus, Alex’s younger brother, Scott, makes a really good egg and tomato bake.

“Fine. All right,” he says, maybe a little cooler than intended, “You can come with me to the Inn. But I’m paying for myself.”

Bolivar offers him a bright, eager smile and leads the way down the dock.

Erik wolfs down his egg-bake mostly in silence, slumped in his usual spot in the corner, nodding occasionally as Bolivar rambles on about his research, giving curt single word answers whenever Bolivar asks him a question.

Outside, the fog presses against the lattice windowpane, the slate sky churning with clouds while inside, the wall mounted kerosene lamps lend their light and birch logs snap heartily in the fireplace at the head of the room where Alex and Armando are occupying a worn, discolored table, their heads lowered conspiratorially over steaming mugs of coffee and half eaten omelets. Alex glances Erik’s way, their eyes meeting briefly, and then looks away again.

“They’re ecologically critical,” Bolivar says, “to controlling the populations of other species – like the grey seal for instance.”

“What?” Erik asks distractedly, his gaze flicking back over to Bolivar.

“Great white sharks,” Bolivar says. “I was saying they’re elusive and that there’s a distinct lack of historical data on their population levels, which means we have to rely on sightings rather than other methods like commercial fishing surveys or census counts.”

The door clangs open, letting in Sean, a newspaper and map folded under his arm as he makes a beeline for Alex and Armando’s table, pausing for a second up by the bar where Alex’s younger brother is working, then again as he’s hailed by Meikle, a grizzled old fisherman idly working on a crossword puzzle while his tablemate picks at a slice of bread pudding.

Meikle swats Brisby dozing at the neighboring table, startling him awake. “Tell young Cassidy here about that time a seal jumped onto your boat to get away from a pod of killer whales,” Meikle laughs.

“I thought you might find them interesting,” Bolivar says. “They can sense electrical currents – it allows them to prey in complete darkness. You see, because of the ion concentrations in their bodies differing from the ion concentrations in seawater, animals produce faint electric fields. And that difference generates a minor voltage, which sharks detect at close range. It’s called electroreception. Truly incredible – they can detect electric field gradients small as a billionth of a volt across a distance of a centimeter. They’re _that_ sensitive.”

Sean makes it to Alex and Armando’s table where he tosses down the newspaper and map, hovering over Armando’s shoulder as the other swiftly unfolds the map and begins tracing a path with his finger, Alex leaning in close to mark something with a pen.

“They’re so terribly misunderstood,” Bolivar says. “There’s been an unfortunate decline recently in the western part of the North Atlantic from the historically high estimate of 61.”

Sean nods at something Alex says and looks over at Erik. He smiles as their eyes meet and starts Erik’s way.

“But our new studies suggest the population may well increase off the coast in the coming years,” Bolivar says.

“The population of what?” Sean asks.

“Great white sharks,” Bolivar says.

“Here off _this_ coast?” Bolivar nods eagerly. Sean rakes a hand through the mop of his unruly hair. “I hadn’t heard that. That’s -- great.” His tone is dubious.

“It is,” Bolivar agrees. “I was just about to tell Erik, I’m heading out with a decoy tomorrow. See if anything bites. Would you like to join me?”

“I’m busy tomorrow,” Erik says and Bolivar’s face falls, but only briefly because in the next second Sean says, “Uh -- maybe, yeah,” and slides into the empty seat beside Erik. “In three years I’ve only seen one, about -- 32 kilometers out on the _Cailleach_. 15-footer.”

“15-footer.” Bolivar smiles and sips his coffee. “We can do better than that.”

Sean glances over at Erik who shrugs back, careless, and takes another bite of egg-bake.

“Come back to my place later,” Bolivar says to Sean. “I have some pictures you might be interested to see.”

“Taken here?” Sean asks.

“With a submersible camera,” Bolivar says, nodding. “One of my own design. The images I caught are – by my own estimation – of a near 17-foot female. 3 kilometers off shore.”

“I trust you’ve notified the Coast Guard,” Erik says in between mouthfuls.

Bolivar smiles. “Of course.”

“Shit, man,” Sean says to Erik after a beat, “maybe that’s what happened to your fish.”

Erik pauses mid-chew, narrowing his eyes at Sean. “ _What?_ ”

“Talked to Logan just a few minutes ago. Out on the docks with Moira. Said you lost some monster off your line and got all bent out of shape about it.”

“That man’s brother is a brute,” Bolivar says matter-of-factly.

“ _Yeah_ ,” Sean agrees, giving Bolivar a glance.

“I did not get _bent out of shape_ ,” Erik says.

“He said you looked like you were about to be sick,” Sean says. “Said it nearly took you in.”

Alex and Armando get up from their table together, Armando bringing the map and newspaper as they head toward Erik’s table. Erik watches them near, telling Sean, “It was a 40-pound striper and it was _off_ my line. I was bringing it on the boat when something took it from me -- I didn’t see what it was but it wasn’t a shark.”

Sean whistles softly and leans back in his seat. “ _40-pounder_. I’d be bent out of shape if I’d lost that. You really didn’t see what took it?”

“No,” Erik says, spearing the last bite of egg-bake with his fork.

“You’ve still got your arm,” Sean chuckles, “so -- no, guess it wasn’t a shark then.”

Bolivar waves an effusive hand. “Confrontations are _rare_.”

“What wasn’t a shark?” Alex asks, pulling up a chair.

Bolivar grins up at Armando cheerfully and slides over in the booth to make room for him as Sean says, “Erik lost a 40-pounder. Says something took it right out of his hands.”

“I can’t tell you how much I’d love to keep rehashing this,” Erik says dryly.

“You know I lost three fish out of my basket yesterday,” Armando says. “Damnedest thing. Something pried a hole in the bottom. I never even felt it.”

“Been a lot of weird shit happening lately,” Alex says, looking at Erik.

“Speaking of which,” Sean says.

“You see Creed today?” Alex asks.

Erik hesitates, his gaze cutting back and forth between the two. “Why?”

“He was messing around outside Muñoz’s real early this morning,” Sean says quietly.

“I went out to get the mussels,” Armando says, “and he was there.”

“In the woods,” Alex says. “Saw him sitting up on the ridge – over where that girl washed up. When he saw me he crawled off like an animal. It was still dark.”

“Serial killers often return to the scene of the crime to relive the rush they got while committing the murder,” Bolivar says, staring intently into the bottom of his coffee mug as if to decipher some truth there.

“Funny you should say that,” Alex says, and Armando unfolds the map over the table.

“Check this out,” Armando says to Erik, his finger landing on a spot just North of them. “Six months ago, girl washes up in Port Clyde, missing person’s report, the whole nine yards. The cause of death isn’t drowning, it’s ruled an animal attack.”

His finger traces a path from Port Clyde Northeast to Rockport. “Month before that, another body’s found all slashed and chewed up in Rockport. And here –” his finger falls on Blue Hill, just south of them, “– not even two weeks ago, guy finds a body washed up in the mudflats while out clam-digging.”

“We found the reports in The Herald,” Alex says. “You can read about the last one in Blue Hill here.” He hands Erik the paper Sean brought in, the headline **Resident Finds Body** in bold print across the front page.

“They run straight along the coast,” Armando says. “They’re not too far from here. Not really. And for each one the report is that it’s an animal. Mountain lion maybe. Or a bear.”

“Listen, I get what you’re trying to say here,” Erik says, rubbing a hand over his face, “but –”

“Gentleman,” Meikle says loudly, nodding to them on his way out the door.

Sean and Alex nod back in acknowledgment. “Logan said you were some kind of bounty hunter before you came here,” Alex says once the door swings closed and Erik’s eyebrows shoot up because that’s an interesting, less grisly way of putting it. “Don’t you think this deserves to at least be looked in to?”

“It does”, Erik agrees. But shit if he’s going to be the one to do it. And fuck right off if he’s got to deal with the police crawling all over the village and up his ass. “But I’m not the one to do it.” He drops the paper back on the table without reading it. “Sorry.”

“This isn’t coincidence,” Alex says, his finger on Blue Hill. “Something’s going on.”

“And you think Victor’s behind it,” Erik says. He isn’t skeptical. He’s only stating it.

“You don’t?” Sean asks.

“Victor was outside my place too last night,” Erik says after a careful pause. “He killed a deer and it was -- completely bizarre but -- you know how he is. I talked to Logan and he said this is the kind of thing Victor does when he’s pissed.”

“Victor’s his brother,” Armando says, “of course he’s going to say that.”

“His story checks out,” Erik says.

Armando’s shaking his head. “No, man, come on. Something’s wrong.”

“Why don’t you take your concerns to the police?” Bolivar asks.

“I have,” Armando says impatiently. “They said they’d look in to it, but I don’t buy it. They didn’t even hardly question anybody.”

“Find someone else,” Erik says, balling up his napkin, tossing it on his plate. He’s nudging Sean to let him out when Alex says, “This isn’t the first time. It’s been a few years, but –” He looks over at the bar where his brother has just knocked over a juice pitcher, grabbing a dishtowel with a quiet curse. “When I was around twelve, and Victor had been here about two years, an entire driftwood forest washed in overnight after this massive storm – creepy as shit. Scott and I got up real early to go exploring in it – and there was this body all ripped up, guts spread across the sand. Scott didn’t see it, but I did.”

“That must have been disturbing for you,” Bolivar says.

Alex ignores him, still looking at Erik. “They said that was an animal too.”

“So?” Erik says.

“So,” Alex says, “do you not realize how rare animal attacks are?”

“I guess what I should have said,” Erik says, “is why are you telling me about it?”

“Because I thought maybe given what you used to do, you might give a shit,” Alex says. “The police obviously don’t.”

What I _used_ to do, Erik thinks, you don’t have the stomach for. “Look, clearly the two of you have made up your minds about Victor,” he says, “and I’m not saying he isn’t guilty of – something. I don’t know. But I am not the one to find out for you.”

Alex considers Erik, his mouth pressed in a tight, thin line. “Even if Victor _doesn’t_ have a hand in all this – someone does. Or _something_.”

“All right then,” Erik says, nudging Sean again, “have a good day.”

“There’ve been other things too,” Armando says. “Strange things.”

 _Verdammt nochmal!_ Erik sighs and thumps his head back against the window.

“We found what looked kind of like a snake track in the mud,” Alex says. “But it wasn’t quite right.”

“Way too big,” Armando says. “Looked like it came out of the water, messed around over by where I had chanterelles drying, ate the whole strand and went back in.”

The back of Erik’s neck prickles. He doesn’t miss the sudden intensity of Bolivar’s stare, as though he’s trying to communicate something to Erik over the rim of his mug as he drains the last of his coffee.

“We found something similar on the beach over by Irving’s place on the way back to Armando’s,” Alex says. “It was pretty late at night.”

“For some reason I thought you lived with your brother,” Bolivar says, shifting in his seat. He looks restless suddenly, ready to leave. Erik knows the feeling.

“I -- do?” Alex says.

“He helps me gather mussels most mornings,” Armando says quickly. “Goes faster that way. And I help him repair crab traps in the winter.”

“I was taking fish out to the smoker,” Sean says, changing the subject, “and thought I heard someone say my name. But it was – I don’t know – different. When I looked there was no one there. Then it happened again. I think it was coming from the water.”

“The whales are back,” Erik says, his stomach busily tying itself in knots. “Maybe from a distance it sounded like –”

“Pretty damn sure I know what whales sound like,” Sean says. “This wasn’t that. Whoever it was, they were close.”

“Did you see anything?” Bolivar asks.

Sean shakes his head. “Wish I knew who it was.”

“Lot of weird shit,” Alex says.

“I really ought to be going,” Erik says into the silence that follows.

“Yeah, I should too,” Bolivar says. “I’ve got some work to take care of. But I trust I’ll see you all back here tonight.”

Alex looks ready to protest but Erik’s saved by Moira pushing through the side door. “Sean!” she calls, carrying a crate overflowing with oranges, “can you come to the back and help me?”

The second Sean stands, Erik is sliding past him and in short order makes it out the door. He manages only a few steps before the door swings open behind him, quick, thudding steps following after him.  

“You’ve seen one,” Bolivar says. “Haven’t you. Recently. Maybe even today.” Erik turns, and something must be showing on his face again because the look in Bolivar’s eyes can only be described as triumph. “I knew it,” Bolivar says excitedly. “I knew it.”

He follows Erik from the Inn all the way back down to where Erik’s boat is moored because Erik refuses to discuss this in hearing distance of anyone.

“When? Where was it? -- I should log the coordinates. Wait, what did it look like?” Bolivar hits him with a litany of questions as soon as they’re safely out of shot from the Inn.

Erik leans against a piling, his arms crossed over his chest, and considers Bolivar, hesitating.

“The fish you lost today,” Bolivar says, “is that what happened to it? It is, isn’t it? -- Erik?”

“It is,” Erik admits cautiously.

“You have no idea how long I’ve hoped for this,” Bolivar says. “No idea. I’ll bet you anything that’s the voice Sean heard. And then those snake tracks Alex and Armando found –”

“Speak to anyone about this,” Erik says, “and I swear –”

“I won’t.” Bolivar throws his hands up. “On my word. You can trust me.”

“No one,” Erik says. “No outsiders. And just so we’re clear, none of your –” he gestures, indicating Bolivar “– colleagues or whatever.”

“Not a soul,” Bolivar agrees.

Erik nods. That’s all settled then. “It was just before you saw me bringing my boat in. It took the striper right out of my hands. I didn’t see it – not then anyway – but I felt it. Its _fingers_.” He shudders. Bolivar looks like he’s just been handed the moon. “I saw it moving in the water just after.”

“I envy you,” Bolivar says.

“You shouldn’t,” Erik says sharply. “They’re bad omens. I found one dead when I was a boy. Things fell apart for us – for my family – right after.”

Bolivar frowns. “When was this?” he asks carefully.

“Around twenty years ago. Just before the war.”

“Do you -- blame that for the war?”

“No. _No_ – I blame –” Erik shakes his head, reels himself quickly under control. “But they were the prophets. They brought us misfortune.”

“They?”

“There was another – alive – that stole my father’s watch from me. I saw it again – weeks later – and it – I don’t know. It used my own watch to try and lure me into the water.”

Bolivar is quiet, looking at everything but Erik. “I’m sorry,” he says at last, “for -- your misfortune.”

“You’re lucky,” Erik says, “if the one you saw in Scotland did you no damage. My mother found that same one that stole my watch. It was washed up, caught in a net. And she rescued it. Set it free -- you can’t imagine the price we paid for it. If I could go back – If it had been me – I would have stuck it.”

 

* * *

 

**crescent waxing, 3 moon phases earlier**

_I have heard reciting the incantation and drinking water from the footprint of a human will do it_ , Azazel says, _but that’s just a myth._

Charles keeps his eyes on his task, binding the graze of a spear on Azazel’s arm with seaweed. _You shouldn’t swim up river in the daytime_ , he says. _You’re lucky. This could’ve been worse._

 _Listen to you talk_ , Azazel says. _You sound just like one of your handlers._

 _I do not_ , Charles protests, tugging a little harder than necessary on the binding. _Now get on with it. The truth._

 _A belt made from human skin_ , Azazel says, completely seriously, _will grant you one night._

Charles freezes, his gaze cutting to Azazel’s in disbelief. _You’ve got to be joking._

The fingers of Azazel’s free hand crawl over the slim space between them to brush against Charles’s waist. _An old favorite from the time of sailors – one night – long enough to take a lover or a meal from their sleeping beds. Or both_ , he says, sharp-toothed and grinning, a glint in his pale eyes. _Sometimes even at the same time._

_You’re making this up._

_Yes. But it might still be worth a try._

_Why do I come to you for anything?_ Charles groans.

_If I remember correctly, there was also something about eating human bo–_

_Stop_ , Charles says. _The truth this time. I’m serious._

_Are you?_

_Azazel_ , Charles says wearily.

 _Blood_ , Azazel says, eyes glittering, his smile a wicked curl. _Freely given – or else its potency will not be as strong. Spilled under a full moon. And yours. Spilled in good faith under the following new moon. It will grant you a season._

Charles finishes with Azazel’s arm and meets his eyes.

 _Blood magic of the most dangerous kind_ , Azazel says.

For a moment Charles doesn’t speak, laying himself on his back to watch the sky turn through the fissure of his sea cave, his heart beating quicker with the possibility of his closest desire so near at hand. _Spilling my blood_ , he says at last. _What would it require?_

_Still meaning to go through with it then?_

_Tell me._

Azazel’s smile returns, razor-sharp. _More strength than you have to give._

Charles’s own smile is every bit as sharp. Sharper. _Don’t be so sure._

 _A blade of human bone_ , Azazel says. _Carved by your own hand._ _Forged of spells and blood._

Charles’s heart staggers in his chest. Maybe more strength than he has to give.

Azazel laughs softly at whatever it is he sees flash over Charles’s face. _I told you,_ _Princeling. You do not have the stomach. And that’s not even the best part. This thing you want_ , _making yourself into something new, comes at a price. One most aren’t willing to pay. There is a_ reason _no one dares go above anymore._

 _I want this_ , Charles says softly, to himself, to Azazel, to the sea, to nothing.

 _Of course you do_ , Azazel says. _Everyone wants what is forbidden. Everyone wants what they can’t have._

 _There has to be another way_ , Charles says.

 _There isn’t. And spilling human blood is a mere trifle to what comes after. If you can’t manage that –_ Azazel slithers close, his breath warm and damp on the sensitive shell of Charles’s ear. _You know the rules of remaking, Charles. Payment must be made._

Charles turns his face toward Azazel’s. They’re so close. Close enough Azazel’s body heat radiates down his side. Close enough he can pick out the deeper flecks of blue in Azazel’s vivid eyes.

With Azazel’s next words, those eyes are on Charles’s mouth. _Have I ever told you how I got my scar?_

 _Several times_ , Charles says, reaching to trace his finger gently over the mark slashing Azazel’s face. _I can’t help noticing the story changes depending who you tell it to._

 _It was given to me by a lover_ , Azazel says. _A human._

Charles’s pulse flickers. _Another of your stories?_

_If it were, it would not be a pretty one._

_Are you going to tell me what happened?_

_You can see for yourself_ , Azazel says. _The details aren’t important._

_You were hurt._

Azazel smiles. _Vengeance was won._

Charles exhales and considers asking but doesn’t. _The bone knife?_ he asks instead.

 _The bone knife_ , Azazel says.

_And blood – freely given under the full moon._

_The blood of someone willing to see you to your prize_ , Azazel says. _Spilled with the bone knife to imbue the blade. Under the new moon, you will go ashore and complete the ritual._

 _Complete it how?_ Charles whispers.

Azazel’s hand rests against Charles’s tail, just below his groin. _Here_ , he says. _Drive in the blade –_ Charles’s eyes go wide. Azazel draws a sharp nail the length of his tail, right down the middle as if splitting a seam. – _And carve your legs free._

Charles flinches under his hand despite all his efforts of holding still. But Azazel doesn’t tease him for it. Instead, he strokes Charles’s scales gently. Soothing.

 _If I do something wrong?_ Charles says, near breathless. Already, his heart drums rapid with fear. _Make a mistake?_

Azazel hesitates. His hand still soothes against Charles’s tail. _Then you will have gutted yourself like a fish._

 

**waxing gibbous, 2 moon phases earlier**

_It should be me going_ , Raven says, her color toxic with warning; the only one of their kind gifted with the ability to change not only her coloring, but the texture of her skin to blend with the corals and rocks.

 _You are not of age_ , Charles says, following safely behind as she hunts for pollock in the dark kelp forest.

Raven hisses and darts sideways, disappearing in a cloud of stirred up sediment. _That never would have stopped you._

_Raven?_

_It was supposed to be the two of us, Charles. That’s what you said._ She pinches his fin from behind. Hard.

Charles yelps and whips around in surprise. _It will be_ , he says. _You will come with me later. I promise._

Raven laughs, coarse and birdlike. _Later_ , she mocks. _I promise._

_Raven, please –_

_You can be_ so _arrogant. Manipulating everyone to get your way. Why? Why now? Why can’t you wait?_

Because he wants this for himself and himself alone. He does not dare say this.

 

**full moon, 1 moon phase earlier**

_I have to admit_ , Azazel says, admiring the cruel white curve of Charles’s blade, _I didn’t think you had it in you._ His eyes, gleaming with amusement, flick to Charles’s. _Did they struggle?_

Charles’s gaze slides away from Azazel and the bone knife. _No. No, it was – quick._

 _And painless?_ Azazel smirks. _You sang them to sleep, didn’t you?_ He holds the blade up to the moonlight. Shakes his head in disbelief. _You must_ really _want this._

Charles _does_ want this. In a way that aches. In a way that haunts him. But that blade Azazel admires doesn’t belong to him. Not quite. It was carved by his hand, sure, but the butchery required to gain it –

 _I’m afraid_ , Charles admits softly.

 _You’ve come too far to turn back now, Princeling_ , Azazel says, pressing the blade to his wrist.

Charles’s breath flickers in and out, his lips clumsy around the words of the spell as the blade bites into Azazel’s flesh, blushing red as it drinks.

The Sirens made a kill not two weeks ago, luring a seaside artist to the waves, dragging him down to the pitch black. Charles took their scraps. And from them, fashioned his blade.

He has no idea what Azazel would say to this if he knew. He has no intention of finding out.

 _Why are you helping me?_ Charles asks, once it’s done. _When no one else will?_

Azazel frowns. _You’re my best friend_ , he says, drawing back the blade, a few spare drops of blood falling to the white sand. _Because you want this. And because I want you to have what you want._ He binds the hilt of the blade in fisherman’s twine. _Once you’ve had your fun, gotten it out of your system, you’ll realize there’s nothing worth staying for in the human world._ He looks at Charles, something Charles can’t quite name in his gaze as he holds out the knife.

Charles bows his head and Azazel loops the twine around his neck.

 _Maybe_ , Azazel says, his fingers lingering on the back of Charles’s neck, _what you already have will finally be enough._

 

* * *

 

Under a bare sliver of a moon, armed with a speargun, Erik navigates his boat down a stretch of coast dotted with sleeping houses, around Crow Neck Point, the watch light swinging his way, then back out to sea again, and into fog-bound Thornwood Bay, secluded and black with crowded trees.

He’s exhausted, at the rough end of a long week, his face still stinging from this morning’s round haul, stung up by jellyfish whipped at head-height over the stern roller along with the fish, his hands and forearms aching from hauling in the net, his body gripped with an allover soreness from holding his balance through the pitch from one 45-degree angle to the other.

He would sleep – _he should sleep_ – but he can’t leave this lurking over his shoulder. His lack of focus has turned dangerous and he won’t risk another incident like the one he had aboard the _Cailleach_ yesterday, nearly getting himself set out with the net as it’d paid out at breakneck speed.

Away in the dark, a coyote yips. The trees clack their branches. The night feels close and alive.

Erik circles the bay, hunting for the words to lure the creature in.

 _Remember that old story?_ Magda asked him once. _The one about the merfolk?_

They were both grown up too fast, their childhood kingdom razed to the ground; stories were all they had left.

_Sing for them, and they might grant you a wish._

The only wish Erik wants granted by this creature is that its scales be easy to pierce.

 _You know that’s just a fairytale_ , Erik said as gently as he could. He did not add, _Wishes don’t come true_. That much, she already knew.

It’s been years since he’s sang, and it shows. His voice is hoarse and small, swallowed up by the fog, but with each verse it gains back its strength, and word by word, line by line, falls into the old rhythm.

 _Den Schiffer im kleinen Schiffe_  
_Ergreift es mit wildem Weh;_  
_Er schaut nicht die Felsenriffe,_  
_Er schaut nur hinauf in die Höh'._

Miles out to sea, the humpbacks lend him their eerie harmony.

He sings. And he waits. But nothing comes. The stars look on, turning above him.

His voice runs out, shadows swimming in the corners of his vision, and between one slow blink of his eyes and the next, his kerosene lantern extinguishes – run out of oil.

The back of his neck prickles. He draws a slow, deliberate breath. In the dark, the water stirs.

He grips tight to the speargun and wills his racing heart to slow. There’s metal in the water. Gold. He can sense it.

 _There’s a theory_ , Bolivar said, _that sharks can sense fear by detecting the electrical impulses given off an accelerated heartbeat._

“I’m not afraid,” Erik whispers.

The shock of a laugh rings in his skull clear and silver as a bell. His fingers twitch on the speargun in reflex.

 _Neither am I._ That silver voice again.

And before Erik can take aim at a shimmer of movement just beyond the prow, his boat upends beneath him.

The freezing water punches the air from his lungs. And the night dissolves around him.

He lashes out at nothing he can see, his heartbeat drumming in his ears, and captures something hard and cold in the snare of his fingers. There’s a short pull of resistance – and it comes free in his hand.

He catches a flash of scales, the water churning around him, and feels a brush against his back like the sinewy body of a snake.

He jerks violently, inhaling a mouthful of water, and claws for the surface.

Gulping down one shivery breath after another, he struggles back into his boat, rolling on his back, shuddering with fear and cold.

Once he’s stopped his thoughts from racing. And his rabbit heart has slowed. He turns on his side, pushing himself up, his fingers clenching tight around –

That’s not possible. He shakes his head in denial, and slowly uncurls his fingers from his papa’s long-missed pocket watch.

“ _You_ –” He coughs hoarsely. “Come back here and face me!”

He waits in the dark. But nothing moves. Nothing comes.

“Seems an ideal spot to get mauled,” Bolivar observes, discovering Erik in the dark the next night around the back of the Inn, the smell of smoked fish heavy on the air. “Things going bump in the night and all that. Can’t be too careful.” Light through the Inn’s back windows fall in slats across the ground, shadows from those inside walking back and forth between them. Bolivar squints into the woods at Erik’s back, then at Erik sitting on a large stone at the base of the slope climbing into the trees. “Forgive my saying so, but you look ill.”

“I could really use the quiet,” Erik says, studying the watch in his hand, turning a thought over and over like a pebble caught in the surf.

“Ah,” Bolivar says. “Then I’ll leave you to it.”

What if? Erik thinks.

– _Victor’s never killed anyone_. _Not in cold blood._

– **Resident Finds Body**.

– _They run straight along the coast._

– _They said that was an animal too._

– _I think it was coming from the water._

What if?

_The merfolk sometimes eat people, just because they can._

“Wait!” he calls Bolivar back. “Do you remember how I told you my father’s watch was stolen?”

Bolivar studies the watch in Erik’s hand now too. “May I?” he asks, lifting it gently from Erik’s upturned palm.

The dead girl washed onto the rocks. Erik’s pocket watch. It seemed that in their small corner of the world, the ocean was emptying its secrets.

Bolivar’s gaze fastens on Erik’s. “Tell me,” he says.

Erik does.

 

* * *

 

Beneath the shadow of a granite island, Charles sinks into the kelp thicket, down to the pebbly seafloor. One more night, and the moon will be new. One more night, and he’ll carve out his legs. The thought is enough to send his heart racing. It had been easier to pretend sureness when the ritual was still weeks away.

 _You could come with me_ , he’d said, that night Azazel tied the bone knife around his neck. He wasn’t sure then, what made him say it.

 _Me?_ Azazel said. _I haven’t any more interest in humans. They are boring. And make for awful lovers. Not like us._ His finger drew slowly down Charles’s spine, and Charles couldn’t help but shiver. _They are not as –_ spirited _._

Charles shook his head. _You’re impossible_ , he said. And then his smile grew impish. _What if I fall in love with a human?_

A shadow flickered onto Azazel’s face, his hand reaching, his thumb grazing Charles’s cheekbone. _Humans have inconstant hearts_ , he said, and kissed Charles greedily on the mouth.

Charles catches his fingers against his lips on the memory of that kiss. His thoughts, inevitably, slip toward Max. And it’s then he can’t stop himself remembering the last night before he left. The Oracle placing her white hand over the beat of his heart. _I fear for you_ , she said. And before he could leave, whispered him a warning: _guard your heart._

 

* * *

 

He senses Sean’s medal coming toward him but doesn’t turn to look. Keeping his eyes trained instead on the water between two mist-wreathed islands, chasing after phantom movement, his ears pricked to the sound of a splash.

“What are we doing?” Sean asks, once he gets close.

“Nothing,” Erik says. “Thinking.”

The night is black and starless. Sean peers out to sea with him, shifting his weight from one foot to the other. “Well,” he says, after a stretch, “come think in The Black Barnacle. There’s something you ought to know about.”

 

* * *

 

He gathers his courage and heads for shore. Draped in fog. Passing over the skeletal remains of a tree sunk deep in the water, its twisted white limbs reaching out to him from below.

It’s quiet. He crawls into the shallows, fistful over fistful of sand, until he’s sitting half in, half out of the water. Further down the curving stretch of beach, the twinkling lights of the village beckon.

The spell slips past his lips. He unloops the bone knife from around his neck with shaking hands. His breath coming shorter, quicker, until it’s only a shallow flicker.

Not for the first time, he catches himself wishing for Azazel’s lofty indifference. Azazel would not be hesitating with the knife poised against his scales. But Charles does. He listens to the sound the water makes, to the woods softly creaking, to his own heart crashing above it all.

 _Think of your sister if you will not think of yourself_ , his keepers said. But Raven refused to speak to him at all. Her face a mask of jealousy as he told their mother goodbye.

She would not hesitate either.

Charles sinks the blade into his flesh.

He cuts. And he cuts. Doubling over as he wretches. The world gone misty at the edges. But he doesn’t stop until it’s done. Squeezing his eyes closed against the gore. Shaking violently. Afraid that when he opens his eyes next, he will find himself forever ruined.

Pain is something he bargained for. But not like this.

With a spasm of his hand, the knife falls from his fingers.

The salt washing over him only adds insult to the injury.

He can’t bear to look. Instead, reaching out a shaking, tentative hand to feel.

He opens his eyes. And there are his legs.

Under the wave of relief, he lets out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. Shivering as his hands glide against new skin.

He tries to stand, and his stomach sinks. Something’s wrong. No matter how he tries, he can’t convince his legs to move. They lie useless in the muck, pale and still as death.

His heart crashes in his chest. He looks around. Blinking. And touches his face, drawing a hand slowly over one eye, then the other.

Moments ago, he had been able to see in the dark. Now though…

His tricks have all left him. He’s gotten exactly what he asked for and then some. He’s human. Limited. Vulnerable. Breakable.

The water is cold, biting at his tender flesh.

His legs won’t move. And his eyes can’t see.

He shivers. His ears pricking to the whistle of some nighttime bird. To the wind hissing through the pine boughs.

He feels like prey.

But he can’t get up. And he can’t go back.

 

* * *

 

“The police aren’t looking in to Victor,” Sean says quietly, as though afraid to be overheard. But it’s late and the Inn is near empty, the tables wiped down and the chairs overturned. It’s only the three of them, Sean, Moira, and Erik. And Brisby, slumped over and snoring in a chair by the dying fire.

Erik raises his eyebrows in surprise but doesn’t comment. He doesn’t say he too has already pinned the blame elsewhere. He swallows back a mouthful of bourbon. Then a thought occurs to him. “Who _are_ they looking in to?”

In the middle of drying dishes, Sean turns, his dishtowel-wrapped hand tucked halfway into a glass. “Summers.”

“ _What?_ ”

“And Muñoz. Possibly. They invited him in for questioning today.” Erik just stares. “Yeah,” Sean says, and sets back to drying glasses.

“That doesn’t make sense,” Erik says, getting up to rinse his own glass in the sink. “ _Victor_ makes sense. Hell, _I_ make sense. Even _Logan_ makes more sense than _Summers_. And _Muñoz_?! You’ve got to be shitting me.”

“People are saying how strange it is that he and Alex were the ones to find her,” Moira says, brushing off a bar stool before sitting on it.

“They were also the ones who went and called the cops,” Erik points out.

“They’re wondering what Alex was doing out so early to begin with,” she says.

“He’s always out that early,” Erik says. “Helping Muñoz get his damn mussels. Everyone knows that.”

“They’re saying it’s odd how Armando holes himself up away from everyone else,” she says.

Erik snorts. “I keep myself away from everyone else, so what?”

“They think it’s odd because he usually has Summers with him,” she says. “Just the two of them. Alone. Together.”

Sean coughs, taking a sudden intense interest in his task.

Erik knows the true nature of Armando and Alex’s relationship. Everyone does to some extent. But up until now they’ve all been polite enough to pretend not to notice. “What the hell’s going on?” he wonders aloud.

Moira rubs at her forehead. “People are idiots. They’re scared. And want someone to blame.”

“Victor doesn’t have a record,” Sean says. “You said so yourself. But Summers does.”

“Summers –” Erik looks over at Brisby as he mumbles something in his sleep, then walks back around the bar and drops onto his seat, lowering his voice. “He was just a kid. His parents had just died. What happened between him and the cops was bullshit. Just another example of systemic bias. And Muñoz – I can’t fathom believing Muñoz guilty of _anything_. Let alone _murder_.”

Sean nods his agreement. “I think it’s Victor.”

“I know,” Erik says. “And I told you –”

“Yeah, I know what you told us,” Sean says. “But maybe Muñoz’s right. Maybe Logan’s too close and just can’t see it. Think about it. Victor takes off, sometimes for weeks. And no one has any idea where he’s been. He went to Rumford looking for a job? Sure. He’s got witnesses? Fine. But Rumford is two towns over from Somerset. That girl went missing out of Somerset. You think whoever the hell Victor talked to in Rumford knew where he was the whole time?”

“If Victor’s been looking at job offers,” Moira says, “then he’s been looking on the coast.”

“Port Clyde,” Sean says. “Rockport. Blue Hill. Come on, you can’t tell me you don’t see this.”

“I see it,” Erik says. “Okay. But there’s something you don’t –”

“Maybe it would mean something coming from you,” Sean says. “To the cops I mean. If you used to be a bounty hunter, then –”

“Enough,” Erik says. He exhales heavily, fixing his gaze on a damn trophy striper mounted on the wall above Sean’s head. The pin-up mermaid behind the bar eventually drawing his eye. After a long moment of him staring at the mermaid, and Sean staring at him, Sean turns, following his gaze. He looks back at Erik, one eyebrow quirked.

“I need some time to think,” Erik says.

Walking home, he rakes back over what Armando and Alex told him last week at breakfast. Port Clyde. Rockport. Blue Hill. He rubs his face with his hands and turns a cold eye to the sea. Maybe he should talk to Bolivar. Figure out how he’s supposed to explain that what’s behind these strange deaths is neither mutant nor human, but something else entirely.

The night air has a chill and brings with it the smell of salt. He closes his eyes and breathes deeply, trying to clear his pounding head. When he opens his eyes next, he stops dead on his feet.

There’s something in the dark ahead, slumped over on the muddy shore where the path curves and the woods stand closest. A pale lump of a thing hunched up in the shadows.

The distant watch light on Crow Neck Point swings round, and in the gauzy cast of its beam, Erik finds a kid, all slim and pale, staring back at him with wide, startled eyes; a deer caught in headlights.

With the next swing of the light, the kid’s face floods with relief. As if he’s just been delivered a savior.

Erik stays planted where he is, wary of coming any closer. He doesn’t know this kid. One of the Newman boys maybe? Moira said Bartley’s got a whole clan of sons over there on Castine. Rowdy, trouble-prone boys Meikle’s taken under his wing. If Erik had to guess, he’d pin the kid’s age somewhere near Sean’s. Early twenties. He decides in an instant that whatever mess this is, he doesn’t want any part of it.

But with another swing of the light, he notices the blood trail stretching from the water up the sand, and swears softly under his breath, shaking himself into action.

The kid’s missing _all_ his clothes, shivering hard and his lips tinged blue. But somehow, despite all this, he looks stupidly pleased when Erik kneels beside him, looking him over for injuries. He smiles at Erik.

Erik meets his eyes, his mouth grimly set. “Where are you hurt?”

The smile fades. The kid looking down at his legs. Erik looks at them too. There’s no visible wound he can find. But the concern the kid wears while studying them sets Erik to wondering.

“Can you walk?” he asks.

A shake of the kid’s head in answer, his eyes flitting back to Erik’s. There’s dried blood smeared all the way down his legs.

Were you attacked? is the glaring question in Erik’s mind. “Can you speak?” he asks aloud.

The kid visibly swallows. His fingers reaching to his throat. When he parts his lips a sound comes out, but that sound is not a word. Slowly, he shakes his head _no_ again.

Not a Newman boy. “Where did you come from?” It’s an absent question. One Erik doesn’t expect an answer to, but the kid points out to sea.

“You came from out there?” A nod.

Boat crash, Erik thinks. He’ll check the scanner. Dial Logan on the rotary. He looks out to sea, but everything remains tucked away by fog. Only Crow Neck Point stays visible. The watch light sweeping over them. Throwing them back into the dark. Sweeping over them again. Silently, he considers his options.

It’s kinder to bring the kid to his house he supposes, rather than to the Inn without a stitch of clothing. Kinder _and_ closer.

“Right,” he says. “Here’s what we’re going to do. I live just up the path there.” The kid follows his hand as he points. “If you want to come with me. I’ll make a call. Get someone out on the water. And find you something to wear in the meantime. Okay?”

The kid doesn’t indicate one way or the other but looks to the water instead.

“ _Okay_ ,” Erik decides. He rakes a hand through his hair and looks at the kid’s legs. “Do they hurt? I don’t see any – any injuries.” The blood though. He can’t figure out where it came from. Unless there’s something he isn’t seeing. He can’t really be sure until he gets the kid under a proper light. “Are they broken?” he asks.

The look the kid gives him suggests the answer might be yes.

“Is it all right if I –?” Erik asks, his hands hovering just over the kid’s right leg, waiting for permission.

The kid draws a breath. Nods. And at the touch of Erik’s hands, parts his lips as if he means to say something, but no sound comes out. He meets Erik’s eyes. Swallows. His skin under Erik’s hands is solid gooseflesh.

“I don’t feel any broken bones,” Erik says softly, carefully feeling along one leg, then the other. The kid’s legs are filthy. Caked in mud and sand and blood. But seem to be unharmed. Erik chews on his bottom lip. It doesn’t make sense. “I’ll help you stand.”

The kid’s knees buckle the second they bear weight, his body sagging against Erik’s, his hands clutching tight to Erik’s shirt. His legs aren’t broken. They simply don’t work.

Erik doesn’t let him fall, holding him against his side while judging their path ahead. Without asking for permission, he adjusts his grip on the kid, bends, and slips an arm under his legs. He waits for the kid to protest, and when he doesn’t, starts walking.

Reaching home takes longer than it should. Since the kid won’t stop pawing at branches and twisting his body toward every little sound, forcing Erik to readjust his hold. It leaves Erik feeling both irritated and bemused.

When they finally _do_ make it, Erik lets them in with his powers, not thinking twice about it, and flicks on the lights. The kid blinks, and in the sudden heat of Erik’s cottage, shudders in Erik’s arms, his face going lax with relief. His sigh brushes Erik’s cheek. His fingers curling on Erik’s shoulder.

For a moment, Erik just stands with him in the middle of the room, unsure what to do next.

His eyes wander before falling on the cast iron tub peeking out from behind the bathroom’s ajar door. “You can get cleaned up in here,” he says, carefully setting the kid down on the rim of the tub, steadying him, averting his eyes. Absolutely _not_ noticing the starbursts of freckles across the expanse of all that pale skin. “There’s soap,” he says, grabbing the bar off the stand beside the tub, “and –”

The kid pinches the cloth of Erik’s sleeve between his fingers, rubbing it gently as if to judge its make. It’s just worn out cotton flannel. Erik pulls away. There are any number of troubling questions on his tongue.

He reaches for a washcloth from the storage basket underneath the stand and turns on the faucet, jumping as the kid jerks back, startled.

“ _What!?_ ” Erik grabs him to stop him falling.

The kid leans forward, scooping a handful of warm water from the stream and smiles. Here in the light, in the heat, his lips are kiss red.

Erik stares at him. “Wash up,” he says. “I’m going to make a call. And find you something to wear.” He hands the kid the washcloth. Gets up. Pauses in the doorway. The kid seems more interested in inspecting the soap he’s been given rather than using it. Giving it a thoughtful sniff as his eyes swivel all around Erik’s bathroom.

He dials Logan first after turning on the radio scanner, keeping his voice low, spinning around when he hears the kid slide into the tub with a soft thud.

“This better be good.” Logan’s voice crackles down the line.

By the time he returns to the bathroom, the kid’s still slowly wiping grime from his legs, so Erik walks over to his dresser, turning up a pair of old sweatpants and a grey wool sweater.

“Finished?” he asks from the doorway. The kid peers at him over the rim of the tub and nods.

Erik helps him out of the tub, quickly draping a clean towel over him before passing him the sweatpants and sweater. The kid looks first at the bundle in his lap, drawing a finger down the cable knitting of the sweater, then at Erik. His eyes are impossibly, disarmingly blue.

Something about him rings eerily familiar. Erik wracks his brain for where he might have seen him before but comes up empty handed. “I can -- Do you need help getting dressed?” he asks.

A faint smile touches the kid’s lips, his hand reaching over to Erik’s knee. Erik freezes solid for the full space of a breath. Then pulls away, sharper than probably necessary. He clears his throat. “Come on. Get dressed.”

He dials the Inn. Then Doctor Irving. Apologizing for the late hour.

When he turns, the kid’s wolfing down a chunk of stale half-eaten blueberry bread Erik had sitting out on his coffee table from this morning.

Erik watches him with a slight quirk of his lips. “ _Hungry?_ ” he asks.

And it’s the way the kid’s face lights up, like he’s never eaten anything half as good as that stale bread, that has Erik digging around his fridge for last night’s corn chowder and a leftover crab cake.

The kid eats like he’s never seen food before, and like he’s never going to see it again, the spoon Erik hands him discarded after a brief inspection in favor of gulping chowder straight from the bowl.

Wordlessly, Erik hands him a napkin. “You, um –” He gestures at the chowder dribbling down the kid’s chin. Shakes his head. “I’m Erik,” he says.

The look the kid gives him is strange, a frown tugging on his lips as he chews. He wipes his chin with the back of his hand, the napkin fallen to the floor.

“I probably should have said it earlier,” Erik says. “Do you – I don’t know your name.” He rakes a hand through his hair, turning as Logan thumps twice on his door.

“Meikle’s gonna take a boat and crew out,” Logan says, stomping his boots, stepping inside, and closing the door. “But no distress calls have come in. It’s dead quiet out there.”

By now the kid’s working on the crab cake, Logan briefly snagging his attention before he goes back to eating.

“That’s the kid?” Logan asks.

Erik nods. Turning just in time to see the flicker of something on Logan’s face, there and gone too fast to decipher.

“Can I see you outside?” Logan asks.

Through the window, Erik watches the kid pull his tacklebox from under the coffee table and start rifling through his fishing lures.

“Where the hell’d he come from?” Logan asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Who is he?”

“ _I don’t know._ He, uh – he doesn’t talk. Can’t walk either. I told you he’d been in the water. For a while, I think. I’m surprised he didn’t have hypothermia.”

“You said he was a mess,” Logan says.

Erik nods. “He cleaned up okay. I didn’t find any injuries.” The kid flinches, pricking his finger on the tip of a hook. “He’s a little -- _odd_ ,” Erik says.

“This is –” Logan watches the kid, a furrow in his brow. “I don’t like this.”

“Bodies turning up out of the blue,” Erik says dryly. “Investigations. A boat crash is just what we needed.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Logan says. He nods toward the kid, who’s given up Erik’s fishing lures and is now stretching himself as far as he can off the side of the sofa, reaching for Erik’s bookcase. “You don’t know anything about this kid. Are you sure it was a good idea bringing him here?”

“What was I supposed to do? Leave him there? You wouldn’t have done that.”

“ _There are bodies turning up_ ,” Logan says. “You think I haven’t heard the stories Summers and Muñoz are pushing around? They think Victor –” He crosses his arms, the furrow in his brow deepening. “Listen to me. There’s nothing out there in that fog. Meikle will search. All night if he has to. But –”

The bookcase collapses at the same time the kid falls off the end of the sofa.

“It’s all right,” Erik says, leaving Logan outside to help the kid off the floor, righting the bookcase by its metal frame with an absentminded wave of his hand. The casual display of his powers draws out one of the brightest smiles he’s ever seen. He returns the smile faintly, feeling strangely pleased as he stoops to pick up books and a few scattered odds and ends, restacking them on the shelves.

Eventually, Logan follows him back inside, sitting wordlessly in the armchair beside the sofa. He stares at the kid’s legs. Erik flicks a pen at him.

“I was going to ask –” Erik says, ignoring the look Logan’s giving him, picking up another pen that’s rolled under the coffee table, handing it to the kid “– your name.” He picks up a splayed notepad, but before he can hand that over too, the kid is already pressing the tip of the pen to the palm of his left hand. Slowly and meticulously, he writes something there. When he’s finished, holding out his hand for Erik to see.

C H A R L E S

“Charles.” Erik smiles and sits on the sofa beside him. “I’m – well, I already told you my name.” Logan snorts. Erik inclines his head toward him, saying flatly, “this is Logan.”

Charles’s gaze darts to Logan, back to Erik.

“Can you tell me anything else?” Erik asks. “What happened? How you ended up out there in the water?”

Charles looks down at the pen in his hand, his fingers tightening around it, but he doesn’t write anything more.

Erik frowns. One awkward minute passes. Two.

Finally, Charles reaches for the blank notepad on the coffee table, setting his pen to it.

R A V E N

And underneath that.

A Z A Z E L

He smiles at his own wobbly handwriting.

“Promising,” Logan says. “Real promising.”

Erik scratches the back of his neck, at a loss. For the second time that night, there’s a knock at his door.

“He’s not one of Bartley’s, is he?” Sean asks, pushing an empty wheelchair into the room when Erik gestures him in, Moira and Irving following on his heels.

“No,” Erik says. “His name’s Charles. Where’d you get the chair?”

“Douglas’s mother died back in October. And I mean, she won’t be needing it, so – _Christ, woman._ _What?_ ” he yelps as Moira elbows him.

“We don’t need the story behind it,” she says, looking at Charles.

“ _He asked_ ,” Sean says.

Charles regards them all curiously before looking to Erik.

“Sean. Moira. And Irving,” Erik says to him. “Irving there,” he nods toward the stooped, white-haired man busying himself with his satchel, “used to be a doctor. He’s just here to take a look at you. If you’re okay with it. Make sure you’re all right.”

Moira notices the notepad on the coffee table and the pen in Charles’s hand. She smiles at Charles. “Has he told you what happened?” she asks Erik.

“Lehnsherr doesn’t know a single thing about a single thing,” Logan pipes up from Erik’s armchair.

Erik ignores him. “No. He – I haven’t learned anything different from what I told you over the phone.”

Sean walks over to Erik’s kitchen counter where the radio scanner sits in silence.

“Pretty quiet tonight, huh?” Logan says to him.

“Yeah,” Sean agrees. “I was all set for bed.”

“I wonder where he’s from,” Moira says, as Irving shoos Erik off the sofa to sit beside Charles.

“An invalid wandered off from Fern Grove Institution perhaps?” Irving says, tilting Charles’s chin toward him, shining a light in his eye. “Unlucky enough to find himself in the water. I could make a call? See if they have a missing patient.”

Charles reaches for Irving’s glasses perched on the end of his long nose. Irving frowns at him sternly, gently taking Charles’s wrist and lowering his hand.

Erik and Moira look at each other. “I don’t – think that will be necessary,” Moira says.

Irving nods and continues his exam. He presses and prods at Charles, feeling his organs. He checks Charles’s reflexes. He listens to Charles’s heart. And allows Charles to hold the stethoscope a moment when Charles won’t leave it alone. He checks Charles for fever. And feels up and down his spine. Lastly, he examines Charles’s legs.

“No concussion,” he says. “No bleeding. No lesions. No broken bones. He’s perfectly healthy. A little confused, but given my earlier thought, not unexpected.” He packs his satchel and stands. “He could probably stand some food and a good night’s sleep.”

“I could -- take him to the Inn?” Moira says, after Irving has gone. “Until we figure out where he belongs.”

Logan makes a quiet sound of disapproval but doesn’t say anything.

Erik hesitates before agreeing. “Yeah. Let me just –” He turns and finds Charles asleep on the sofa, worn out after Irving’s lengthy examination.

“Or maybe it might be better if he stays here for the night,” Moira says. “I’d hate to wake him. Who knows what he’s been through.”

Erik opens his mouth. Closes it again.

“You can bring him down in the morning,” she says, patting the arm of the wheelchair.

Sean straightens up from leaning against the kitchen counter. “Everything’s good? We can go?”

“I – yeah,” Erik says. “Yeah. You can go.”

Logan leaves last, throwing a wary glance at Charles over his shoulder on his way out the door. “Be careful of him, Lehnsherr.” He’s so unlike himself that Erik doesn’t know what to make of him.

He doesn’t know what to make of himself either. This alien version of himself compelled to take in a stranger.

For a moment, he does nothing but stand near the sofa, watching the slow rise and fall of Charles’s chest.

He doesn’t sleep that night. But lays awake in the dark, feeling out the metal, every bolt and nail. And listens to the wind knocking softly at the window, to the sea, to the soft in and out of Charles’s breathing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings include violence, self-harm, and blood rituals.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Ableism/offensive/ableist language

Charles is a mystery. And the village loves a mystery. Erik learns this the hard way.

“Boy turned up bloody, straight out of the sea,” Meikle says in a voice reserved for only the best of his _‘fish was so big, I tell ya’_ ’ tales. The rumor spreading like wildfire as Erik pushes Charles’s chair through the crowded Inn.

“Kid has a condition,” Finlay Rendall mumbles under his breath to Holly Mackay at the neighboring table. Holly swatting at her husband, hissing, “Lewis. It’s not polite to stare.”

“But _where_ did he come from?” Hamish Kerr wonders loudly.

Erik chews the inside of his cheek raw.

Charles is restless. His attention held in one place for scant seconds before flitting off to somewhere, something, someone else. He wants to touch _everything_. He wants to see _everything_.

“I guess you’ve heard,” Moira says, bringing over a plate of deviled crab and an orange-glazed cinnamon roll to Erik’s usual spot, setting both down in front of Charles. “There hasn’t been a boat crash.”

“I’ve heard,” Erik says dryly, watching Charles attack the cinnamon roll. He rubs at his temples and swallows the urge to say, _I should leave_. Too many people staring.

“Charles,” Moira says. “Do you need anything?”

“He needs shoes,” Erik says. Socks. And clothes that fit. He’s still dressed in Erik’s from the night before. Erik has a running list in his head of all the things Charles needs. But Moira didn’t ask for that.

“We’ll see what we can do,” she says, before touching Charles’s shoulder. “Charles? Anything?”

The smile Charles offers her is full of charm. It’s also smeared with orange glaze. If Erik didn’t _know_ Charles is mute, he would swear the kid were about to say something coy, something flirtatious. But then Charles’s attention catches on something over Moira’s shoulder, his eyes widening as he points to the pin-up mermaid.

Moira follows his hand and laughs. “I would be more than happy to let you have her, if you wanted to take her off my hands.”

“Giving away my most prized possession,” Sean says with mock offense, edging up behind her carrying two mugs of coffee. One he gives her. The other he offers to Charles.

Moira smiles. “Well, you’re good for something anyway.”

“I’m good for all kinds of things,” Sean murmurs in her ear.

Erik clears his throat. “I’m going to get coffee.”

“Actually,” Sean says, “I was hoping you’d come with me.” He nods toward the side door leading out back. “It’ll just take a minute. Moira can hang out with Charles.”

He’ll be wanting an answer about last night. Best to get it over and done with. Erik stands and Charles’s attention snaps to him, a question Erik can see written on his face.

Sean sees it too. “He’ll be right back,” he assures Charles.

On his way to the door, Erik looks over his shoulder, and finds he still holds Charles’s rapt attention. His eyes following Erik through the crowd.

“Douglas said Charles can keep the chair as long as he needs,” Sean says outside.

“Good,” Erik says, following him around back to the same large stone where Bolivar found him the other night.

“I think he’s just glad to be rid of it,” Sean says. “Bad memories.”

Erik nods.

Armando is sitting on the stone. Alex lingering beside him.

“I know it’s been a long night,” Sean says, “but have you given any more thought to what we talked about?”

Erik hesitates before saying, “I have.”

“And?” Armando says.

“And,” Erik says, “I stand by what I said before. Nothing’s changed.”

“ _Christ, Lehnsherr_ ,” Sean says.

“I had to watch the police search my house,” Alex says.

Erik rakes a hand through his hair. “I know. But listen – I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I think Logan’s right. Least in this instance.”

Alex pinches the bridge of his nose and looks down at the ground. “A simple _fuck off_ would have been enough.”

“I agree, there’s a problem,” Erik says. “And regardless of what you think, I’m working on taking care of it. But I need you to cut me some slack. This is more complicated than you think. All that strange shit you keep running on about? The snake tracks in the mud? The ones too damn big to be a snake? Maybe you ought to be putting some of that focus there.”

The disappointment is plain on Alex’s face. “Four women are dead. Fucking butchered. Five if you count the one from when I was a kid. I’m sorry for Logan, okay. And I’m sorry you feel the need to side with him. _But you’re_ _wrong_.”

“After I’ve taken care of the problem,” Erik says, “I’ll let you know.”

Alex and Armando share a look. Alex shakes his head.

“What do you know?” Sean asks.

“I know I don’t need the cops to figure this out for me,” Erik says.

Alex makes a derisive sound.

Armando inclines his chin toward the Inn. “That new guy in there?”

“Charles,” Sean says.

“Charles,” Armando says. “What happened to him?”

“No one knows,” Erik says.

Armando’s fingers tap restlessly against his knee. A whole minute passes in silence. It feels like a small eternity.

“Guess we know everything we need to then, don’t we?” Armando says eventually.

“Listen,” Erik says.

“So, you’re going to take care of it, huh, Lehnsherr?” Armando says.

“It’s what I said, isn’t it?” Erik says.

Armando fixes him with a solemn stare. “Something bad’s going to happen,” he says. “I can feel it.”

Erik heads back inside feeling riled. Charles is still with Moira. And Bolivar. Sucking on a lemon wedge and finishing the last of the deviled crab.

Moira takes one look at Erik’s face and narrows her eyes.

“I just met Charles,” Bolivar says with an oblivious smile. “I was telling him about marine ecology, and he’s been kind enough to humor me. Is he staying with you, Erik?”

He’s meant to stay at the Inn. That’s why Erik brought him here after all. But he’s caught by Charles’s eyes, brilliant in the spill of light through the window, looking up at Erik through the dark fringe of his lashes. His lips curved in a smile that suggests Erik is the best person in the world. And before his brain can catch up, unbelievably, Erik hears himself say, “Yes.”

 

* * *

 

Victor steps off his skiff onto the dock, letting fall a half-smoked cigar that he crushes out under his boot. He rakes Charles once with his eyes. Then looks at Erik. “Lehnsherr. I heard you got a cripple living with you.” He knows every surefire way to get Erik’s hackles raised.

“Fuck off, Creed,” Erik says, inflectionless. “I haven’t got the time for you today.”

Charles sits stiff in his chair, his expression challenging. Despite all his interest and enthusiasm for everyone, he knows a dick when he sees one. Erik resists the urge to give him an encouraging pat on the shoulder.

Victor notices Charles staring and winks at him. “Was just being polite and saying hello. Been wondering if all those unflattering rumors were true.” Erik narrows his eyes. Victor smiles. “Heard old Irving telling Jimmy the kid’s got imbecile disease. You know what that is?” he says to Charles. “Imbecile disease?”

Erik knows right here, in this instant, that if he had the revolver on him, he’d use it.

Charles is still and silent as a stone.

Victor chuckles. “I see what the geezer means. But -- I’m afraid I’ll have to agree with Jimmy on this one.” His gaze cuts to Erik’s. And his smile grows sharper. “He’s just a fish outta water.”

“Come on,” Erik says, fingers tight on the handgrips of Charles’s chair.

“You’ve never been any fun, Lehnsherr,” Victor says.

Erik ignores the bait, pushing Charles in the direction of the Inn. Charles looks over his shoulder at Erik, worry drawn on his face.

Irving still believes Charles to be a patient from Fern Grove Institution. And maybe he is. It would make sense for him to have come from some bleak, soulless place where he wouldn’t get the education he deserved or the stimulus he needed.

Because while some see only what Irving sees. Erik sees something different. He sees a man escaped. From where or from what, he can’t say. But Charles’s appetite for life reminds him of the first dawn he’d seen after escaping Schmidt and the camps; every color, every thread of gold a miracle.

“Irving is wrong,” he says. And the tension drains from Charles’s face.

At the Inn, he picks up some of Sean’s clothes meant to be donated from Moira.

“Every Christmas,” Moira says, holding up a blue sweater vest, “his mom gets him something like this. I think it looks nice. But he hates it. And anyway, I thought since he and Charles look about the same size –”

“It’ll do for now,” Erik says, stuffing the vest into a paper bag.

Scott and Armando’s voices float in through the propped open door as they pass by the Inn. Charles wheeling his chair outside, following the sound. Hissing as he bangs his knuckles against the doorframe.

“He’s not very good at that,” Moira says quietly, once Charles is out of earshot.

Just outside, Armando tells Charles, “It’s a maritime garter snake.”

“I think he might be suffering from some sort of trauma,” Moira says. “No one knows where he’s from. And he won’t tell us.” Her voice lowers to a whisper, “He was naked. And bloody. Erik, think about that for a minute.”

Last night, after giving Charles the grand tour of his one-room cottage, Erik asked him to write his last name. Charles refused.

“I’ve thought about it,” Erik says.

“Irving’s good with physical injuries,” Moira says, “but not with things like this.”

“No kidding,” Erik says.

“I called the library in town,” she says. “They’re ordering in a couple books on sign language. I thought it might help. That it might be something he’s used to.”

“It’s a nice idea,” Erik says, as Charles wheels himself back inside. “But it takes years to become fluent in –”

“ _I know that, Erik_ ,” Moira says. “But there’s nothing that says we can’t try and make things easier.”

Silently, Erik kicks himself for not thinking of it first. He’s learned six languages through vengeance and spite, and a hell of a lot of good they’re doing him now. “I’m taking him to Wilson’s General Store to grab a few things,” he says. He pulls the paper bag under his arm. “Ready to go?” he asks Charles.

Before they head down the road to Wilson’s though, Erik pulls his beat-up truck into Blueleaf Cemetery, killing the ignition on the overgrown lane into the old section. He jumps out. Gets Charles into his chair and meets his questioning eyes.

Charles doesn’t want to give up his last name. It occurs to Erik that Charles might not even be his _real_ first name. And because Erik gets it, he’s going to let it be. But he knows from experience that won’t work with the rest of the world. So…

“Pick one,” he tells Charles, deeper in. “A stone. So at least if someone asks.” Charles’s expression is searching. “Everyone needs a name,” Erik says.

The cemetery is hushed and alone. Shaded in by towering pines. Sunlight beams piercing the canopy. Mourning doves flashing between the branches.

Charles turns his head one way, then the other. The stones are crawling with vines and lichen. He points. And Erik bends to peel back creeping ivy.

“Francis,” Erik says.

At first Charles doesn’t react. And Erik supposes they’ll have to pick another. But then Charles smiles softly to himself.

“Charles Francis it is.”

 

* * *

 

“You can’t just keep the kid like a stray dog,” Logan said, earlier that afternoon while Charles was with Moira.

“I’m not,” Erik said, shelling peas while directing two knives; one slicing morels, the other chopping carrots.

“You of all people,” Logan said, shaking his head. He grabbed a beer from Erik’s fridge. “None of this rubs you the wrong way? That kid not wanting you to know the truth?”

“He’s harmless,” Erik said.

“You think he’s running away from something,” Logan said. “ _He’s harmless_.” He took a swig of the beer. Considered Erik. “I’ll bet there were people who once thought that about you.”

The saucepan on the stove was boiling, bubbling over, but Erik didn’t move. The knives froze above trimmed squash and onions.

“What about you?” Erik said. “When I first showed up? You got me a job. Kept me on with the crew. After knowing who I was. What I’d done. I told you my story.”

“I _guessed_ your story,” Logan corrected. “And I guessed right.”

They’d gone down this road before. Logan would throw Erik’s real name in his face. Erik would punch him. Logan would punch him back.

“What the hell is it about him,” Erik snapped, “that’s got you so paranoid? He’s in a wheelchair for fuck’s sake. He can’t even speak.”

Logan didn’t answer for so long Erik was sure he wouldn’t. The lines in his face deepened. His gaze swept away to the window.

Erik turned down the heat on the burner. Tossed in fiddlehead greens.

“People aren’t always who they appear to be,” Logan said. “You know that.”

The knives went back to cutting and mincing.

“You think he’s faking it?” Erik said. “Because that’s fucking ridiculous.”

“He isn’t faking it,” Logan said. “But he _is_ hiding something. And I think that _something_ is dangerous. And if you aren’t careful, and don’t stop letting your –” He stopped himself. Erik’s eyes flashed toward him. “You’re going to get yourself pulled into it,” Logan warned.

Erik asked him to leave shortly after.

It’s just temporary, Erik tells himself. Charles staying with him. He tells himself this while pulling baked challah from the oven and finishing up the ragout with fiddlehead greens and wild morels he’s cooked for himself and Charles. Bobby Darin singing, “ _Somewhere beyond the sea – Somewhere waiting for me – My lover stands on golden sands – And watches the ships that go sailing”_ faint and tinny through the radio’s static.

Across the room, Charles is sitting on the floor in front of the bookcase, plucking one title after another off the shelf before settling on _The Old Man and the Sea_.

Erik slices and butters the challah before scooping the ragout onto two plates. “You like fiction?” he says. “Allegories?”

Charles looks down at the books in his lap and smiles faintly. He doesn’t open any. Just looks at the covers.

“Do you – like reading?” Erik asks. His tone is apologetic.

Charles smiles that faint smile again and reaches for the notepad at his side. _Some_ , he writes, holding the pad up so Erik can see. His expression is near ashamed.

Erik brings over the plates and grabs Charles a Ginger ale, joining him on the floor and reaching for _The Old Man and the Sea_ , opening it to the passage he likes best. “ _He no longer dreamed of storms, nor of women, nor of great occurrences, nor of great fish, nor fights, nor contests of strength, nor of his wife. He only dreamed of places now and of the lions on the beach. They played like young cats in the dusk and he loved them as he loved the boy._ ”

Charles’s expression turns soft and distant, looking inwards to something Erik can’t see. Absently, he takes a bite of mushroom, returning from his far-off dreaming in an instant.

“Morels,” Erik says. They taste like warm autumn. “They’re around only a few weeks each spring. Try the challah, while it’s warm.”

Charles bites into the challah and all but melts with the butter. Erik smiles, satisfied.

Charles finishes off two thick slices of challah before something higher up on the bookcase seizes his attention. Erik realizing belatedly, amidst a bite of squash and carrot what it is.

Charles snags the pocket watch by its dangling chain and it comes sliding off the shelf into his hand.

“It was my father’s,” Erik says. Pausing before adding, “It’s got quite the history.”

Charles looks at him, something unknowable in his expression, his thumb rubbing against the watch case. Erik can feel it without having to look. Charles’s finger stroking back and forth against the metal. The gold heating under his skin. Erik swallows.

“I uh – I’m going fishing tomorrow,” he says. “Would you – like to come with me?”

Charles holds his gaze and smiles.

 

* * *

 

Charles laughs. Or more, Charles makes a sound that is not quite but dearly wants to be a laugh as Erik reels in yet another pitifully undersized mackerel.

“I suppose you think you can do better,” Erik says.

The morning breeze flutters Charles’s hair, his eyes reflecting the sun on the water. The day is bright and warm. Charles’s smile is teasing. He reaches for the fish. Unhooking it. Letting it go. He studies the empty fishhook in his hand; Erik’s favorite and luckiest. The one that’s caught him more fish than can be counted.

“Usually I have better luck,” Erik says.

Charles lets go of the hook. Erik doesn’t bother rebaiting it. Waste of bait. He sets his fishing rod aside. “I want to show you something,” he says.

Charles’s fingers trail through the water as Erik rows them up the coast, past Finfolk Island and into the heart of Ragged Bay where Shellycoat Estuary is a riot of purple lupine blooming amid the marsh grass. Wooded on one side, dripping with sunlight on the other, the estuary is both light and dark, the water slow and gentle, bird song riding the air.

“I used to come here all the time,” Erik says quietly. “When I was new and didn’t know anyone. No one comes here so it’s quiet.” He leans into Charles’s space, pointing at something beyond Charles’s shoulder in the dark pool of shade under the crowded trees. “I found them my first year.”

Charles follows his hand to a blue heron still as a statue, nearly invisible against the blue-green of the trees. Two more of the large birds stand frozen on the muddy shore.

“They come back every spring,” Erik says, as the wading heron lowers its head in the water, snatching up a fish with its daggerlike bill.

Charles’s eye catches his. Erik’s still in his space. Charles shifts, and the movement brings them even closer. It occurs to Erik that if Charles leaned forward, just a little bit, their lips would touch. Charles’s eyes are cornering. He lowers them to Erik’s mouth. Erik’s heart thuds in his chest. He isn’t sure if he’s thankful or disappointed when Charles leans away for the notepad under the bow seat.

He watches Charles painstakingly write out a word. _Story._

“What story?”

Charles shrugs. _Any story._

“You want me to – tell you a story?” Erik asks. Charles nods.

I don’t know any. It’s first on Erik’s tongue. But Charles is waiting, expectantly patient.

Erik watches the blue heron move slow and purposeful.

“One of my wishes is that those dark trees,  
So old and firm they scarcely show the breeze,  
Were not, as ’twere, the merest mask of gloom,  
But stretched away unto the edge of doom.

I should not be withheld but that some day  
Into their vastness I should steal away,  
Fearless of ever finding open land,  
Or highway where the slow wheel pours the sand.

I do not see why I should e’er turn back,  
Or those should not set forth upon my track  
To overtake me, who should miss me here  
And long to know if still I held them dear.

They would not find me changed from him they knew—  
Only more sure of all I thought was true…

My father liked that. It’s Robert Frost’s _Into My Own_. I don’t know why I thought of it just now.”

It’s not likely what Charles wanted from him. But it means something to him. And for whatever reason, he wanted Charles to hear it.

Charles’s smile is soft as he reaches his hand over to Erik’s knee. This time, Erik doesn’t pull away.

 

* * *

 

“You’re not a selkie are you, Charles?” Meikle laughs on his way up to the bar, clapping Charles roughly on the shoulder as he passes.

“No,” Victor says, sloshing beer on the table as he sits down across from Logan, next to Erik. “That’s not what he is.”

Erik tenses, waiting for the word _cripple_. But it doesn’t come. Instead, Victor takes a swallow of his beer, his eyes locked on Logan’s over the rim of the glass.

“Behave yourself,” Logan says. Beside him, Charles pushes his dinner around his plate.

Victor snorts. Stabs a fork into his grilled haddock.

Hamish Kerr comes thumping through the main door along with Bolivar and one of Bartley’s quick-tempered sons. The two hired recently by Bolivar for what Erik hasn’t bothered to learn. Bolivar spots him straightaway, heading right to him while Hamish and the volatile Newman kid continue to the bar.

Charles tilts his head curiously as Bolivar asks Erik, “Can I speak to you? Privately. Out back.” He doesn’t wait for an answer. Confident Erik will follow.

Victor smiles at Erik suggestively. “Privately, huh?”

“Victor,” Logan says.

“Perfect height for it, isn’t he, Lehnsherr?” Victor says. He takes another bite of haddock, chewing with a full open mouth.

“Goddammit,” Erik snarls. Charles’s eyes are on him and really, there’s only so many times he can walk away. The room’s gone quiet. And Erik hadn’t even raised his voice. Moira’s gaze fixes on him warningly from behind the bar.

“Does he swallow?” Victor asks.

“Outside,” Erik says, his voice ground low.

Victor’s eyes glitter. Dangerous as ever. He rises from his chair the same time Charles drags his fork across his plate. The sound harsh and shrill. Nails on a chalkboard.

Victor and Logan both grit their teeth and growl at the noise. Sean and Meikle both leave their seats, on the edge of intervening.

Logan grips Charles’s wrist, stilling him. “Victor, sit your ass back down. Lehnsherr, go see what the hell Trask wants.”

Erik and Victor both remain frozen where they are. Neither willing to be first to yield. Erik looks at Charles. Charles’s expression has turned stormy. Tension in every line of his body. He wants to leave. His eyes are telling Erik so.

“ _Now_ ,” Logan growls, his fingers still closed around Charles’s wrist.

Seconds crawl by. Finally, Victor chuckles, shaking his head as he steps aside. Erik roughly knocks his shoulder as he passes, and Victor’s quiet laughter grows.

“Have you seen it?” Bolivar asks, once the door behind Erik closes.

“No,” Erik says. “But I’ve – been a little busy.”

“Yes, of course,” Bolivar says, waving an affable hand. “I’ve been going out in the mornings. And again, just before dusk. The fish bite more then. I don’t know, do you – do you think it feeds at night? I’ve tried different baits. And no luck so far.”

“I don’t know,” Erik says. He feels restless, and while it’s evident by his voice, Bolivar isn’t deterred. Erik peers through one of the windows. Charles is smiling at least. At something Logan said. Victor’s been exiled to another table.

“It’s a shame we don’t know how to lure it in,” Bolivar says.

Erik watches Charles and wonders what Logan’s saying to him.

“Erik?”

“I know how,” Erik says, without taking his eyes off Charles. If only to hurry this along. If only so he can return inside and be the one making Charles smile.

 

* * *

 

“The books came in from the library,” Moira says, setting down two ASL handshape dictionaries and a phrase book on the table in front of Charles. “I don’t mean to assume anything,” she says, “but I thought if this was something you’re used to… I know it takes years to properly learn, but, I thought we could at least try.”

Charles opens one of the books, drawing a finger over the page. He smiles cheerfully at Moira, taking her hand.

A sudden unwelcome pang hits Erik in the chest looking at their linked hands. “Where’s Sean?” he asks, spearing a bite of crab benedict.

“Farmingdale,” she says, “picking up an order of maple syrup.”

“Ah.”

The door swings open, letting in Bolivar carrying a tattered overstuffed folder. He wipes his feet on the mat, smiling pleasantly. “Hello, Moira.”

“Can I get you anything, Bolivar?” Moira asks.

“Just coffee, thank you,” Bolivar says, spotting Erik. “Oh, good. I was hoping you’d be here.” He motions for Erik to join him at an out-of-the-way table, the folder landing in the center of the table with a heavy thud.

“I’ll be just a minute,” Erik says to Charles. But Charles barely seems to hear him, enthralled by Moira’s dictionary.

“Thank you,” Bolivar says to Moira as she hands him a steaming mug. He waits for her to return to Charles before saying to Erik, “I must confess I’ve been entertaining the idea for weeks.” He produces a pen from his jacket pocket. “It’s an undertaking for sure. One that can’t be done alone.” He points the pen at Erik. “But with your powers.” He slides the folder toward Erik. Opens it. Riffling a few papers and tapping one with the pen. And Erik finds himself presented with the architectural sketches of a laboratory and aquarium.

Erik frowns, lifting his eyes to Bolivar’s. He closes the folder. Pushes it back across the table. “Bolivar –”

“I was thinking about what you said,” Bolivar says. “Very -- _folkloric_. And I thought, I know just the place – the sheltered bay past Crow Neck. _You_ could lure it in.”

“Bolivar –”

Bolivar taps himself on the chest with the pen. “And what _I_ do, is –”

“I’m not imprisoning anything,” Erik says. He tugs at his sleeve. “Especially not in some lab.”

Bolivar stares at him, his lips slightly parted, momentarily taken aback. He recovers quickly, contemplating Erik as if he’s a riddle to be solved.

It’s gone too far, Erik thinks. Involving others always spells trouble.

“No, of course not,” Bolivar says at last. “I just thought that, maybe, you’d finally have answers. Some -- _culpability_ for your misfortune. And that, perhaps, these hideous incidents worrying Alex and his friends would be stopped.”

“I’ll deal with this my own way,” Erik says. He nods at the folder. “ _This_ – this isn’t it. Maybe I shouldn’t have involved you.”

“I see,” Bolivar says.

“Where would you even – where would you set up something like this? Don’t you need permits?”

“I’m aware of the problems posed and I assure you, they’ll be taken care of,” Bolivar says.

“Wouldn’t you be better off working out of whatever lab you were sent here from?”

Bolivar’s smile is a peculiar thing. “As you said,” he says, “I’d like to deal with this my own way.” He considers Erik again, lingering on the wear of his jacket. “I’d like to make clear, if payment’s an issue, you would of course be compensated.”

 _Much too far_ , Erik thinks. “That’s not it,” he says, standing, inclining his head toward Charles. “Look, I’ve got –”

Bolivar nods. Looking away and sipping his coffee. A dismissal. But as Erik walks away, he says, “Do you know, Erik, that when an animal becomes a problem – when it becomes a man-eater – it’s eliminated.”

 

* * *

 

“Another body was found,” Alex says, sitting down in front of Erik. He smiles bitterly. “Lucky me, I’ve got a solid alibi.” Erik fixes his prickliest look on Alex. Alex shrugs. Steals one of Erik’s fried chips. “Where the hell’ve you been anyway?”

“Busy,” Erik says.

Alex snorts. “Busy _‘taking care of the problem’_?”

“Is this really what you came over here for?” Erik says. “Taking the piss.”

“Came over to warn you. You might consider thanking me.”

Erik narrows his eyes, but before he can ask, Charles collides with the table with a soft thump, jostling the glasses, water sloshing the table. Moira’s right. He isn’t very good with a wheelchair. He lifts a plate of pan-seared halibut with morels and asparagus from his lap and sets it on the table, sheepishly picking at a morel.

Erik’s given up his usual spot in the back corner for the only wheelchair accessible table in the Inn. A dark grooved hexagonal table closer to the front of the room. He doesn’t like the constant back-and-forth of people walking behind him. He prefers his back to the wall and his eyes covering the room. The Inn isn’t crowded. Not yet. Still too early.

Alex watches Charles pick the mushrooms off his plate one by one. “You sure like morels, huh?”

Erik looks up as Logan laughs gruffly, sitting up at the bar with Sean and Meikle, nodding at something Meikle said.

Charles nods enthusiastically, popping the last morel in his mouth.

“You should try some of Armando’s chanterelles. He brought a pound in for Moira. We got brown boletes and black trumpets too. I’ll go get you some.” He catches Erik’s eye. “Be right back,” he says.

Erik still wants to know what he’s being warned for.

“Damned thing,” Meikle says loudly, “jumped clean out of the water with _my_ fish in its mouth. Snapped my line. Was a beauty too. 3-footer. Near as hell pissed myself.”

Sean laughs. “Told ya I saw it.”

Charles looks to Erik, tilting his head.

“Bolivar’s shark from the sounds of it,” Erik says.

Alex returns to their table with Armando and Scott in tow. “All right,” Armando says. “We’ve got chanterelles. We’ve got black trumpets.” He hands one of each over for Charles to try. Charles grins with delight. “Damn right,” Armando says appreciatively. “Have some more.”

“I’m so sick of mushrooms,” Scott says. “And fish. Fish and mushroom soup. Seared fish. Baked fish.” Alex bumps him with his shoulder and Scott quiets, nudging his glasses higher up his nose.

Charles spears a bite of halibut and asparagus, sure to fork up a couple chanterelles on the way. Alex heads up to the bar to order, returning with a maple-glaze cake that he gives to Scott. “Not fish. Not mushrooms,” he says, at the same moment Victor comes strolling through the door.

“Jesus,” Moira says. “How many times –”

Victor has a knife, which wouldn’t be unusual given that it’s Victor if the knife weren’t made from bone.

“Victor,” Moira says. There’s uncertainty there in the determinedness of her voice.

Victor ignores her, quietly picking dirt from under his nails with the knife. The whole room is his audience. The blade is sickly pale, cruel as any Erik’s ever seen.

Logan’s turned around on his stool, half sitting, half standing. Erik can’t read the look on his face.

“I swear on my dearly departed mother’s grave,” Victor says, without looking at him, “it ain’t mine.”

“Who’s is it?” Logan asks, so low the words are barely audible. As if that will make a difference. As if Victor isn’t parading horror in everyone’s face.

Alex grips Scott’s forearm, looking across his brother to Armando, the two exchanging a telling look. Charles has turned as sickly pale as the knife.

Victor smiles. He still doesn’t look up, a clump of dirt landing at his feet as he picks out another long, sharpened nail. “I found it.”

“Where?” Logan asks.

“Fished it outta the water,” Victor says. “Real human bone. Suppose it’s mine now.”

“It should be given to the police,” Sean says, fingering his medal through the cloth of his shirt. It may as well be a rosary.

Victor lifts an eyebrow. “All right,” he says, picking a tooth with the knife before thrusting it toward Sean. Sean backs away, unwilling to touch it.

Charles grips the edge of the table, his knuckles white. Slowly, Victor turns his head, cunning eyes fixing on Charles. Erik didn’t think it possible for Charles to turn any paler. Victor winks at him once and Charles turns his head quickly away.

It’s Bolivar, finally, who quietly offers to take if off Victor’s hands.

Erik jerks in his seat as Alex’s warm breath hits his ear. He hadn’t noticed Alex leaning in, so preoccupied with Victor. “ _Whitefall_ ,” Alex says. A ghost of a word, more mouthed than spoken. Even so, Erik’s never heard someone make a single word sound so much like a warning.

Outside the Inn, Erik buys a paper from the newsstand. Whitefall. It’s right there on the front page. The next county over. A corpse dredged up from the sea. Too rotten to be identified. According to the paper, forensics is still trying to find a match in the dental record. They’re calling it a homicide. It’s right there in the title. **Murder on Whitefall Beach**.

Erik turns over to the next page. And his eyes go wide. There’s a grainy black and white picture of the murder weapon. Found lodged in the ribs of the victim. A dagger with a snarling wolf’s head for a pommel. It’s his.

It’s a useless endeavor. He knows the dagger’s missing by sense alone. But it still doesn’t stop him from spending the night tearing apart his cottage while Charles tosses fitfully on the sea of blankets spread across the sofa. Bad dreams.

Erik rakes a frustrated hand through his hair. Someone’s been inside his house. The dagger is nowhere to be found. He presses fingers against his throbbing temples. Only Alex and Logan have set eyes on that dagger. But only Logan knows its truth. An ugly relic from Erik’s past. Nazi blade turned Nazi executioner. He’d spilled enough blood with it to fill an ocean. He has no idea why he kept it. He should have given it to the sea.

He scrubs a hand over his face. Looks toward the dark window. He can’t see out. His own reflection staring distrustfully back at him from the glass.

Who’s been inside his house? And what else did they take?

 

* * *

 

“I’m going out,” Erik says. “I need to take care of something. Would you like to go see Moira?”

Charles has been flighty all day. Jumping at odd sounds. Currently, he’s curled in the corner of the sofa, watching the sea roll beyond the window. He doesn’t take his eyes from it as he shakes his head _no_.

“Do you want to go anywhere?” Erik asks. Again, _no_. Erik looks around the room. He’s put it mostly back in order. “Will you be okay?” he asks.

Charles gives him a flat look. Erik doesn’t blame him. He enjoys his solitude but has yet to give Charles his. If that’s what he wants. And apparently it is. But he feels odd about leaving while Charles still struggles with the wheelchair. Never mind the fact of someone creeping in his cottage.

They regard one another. Charles’s expression doesn’t change.

“All right,” Erik says. “I’ll try and be back soon. You – you be careful. If you need help…” He raps his knuckles against the top of the rotary. “Number for the Inn’s on the fridge.”

Alex and Scott’s house is twice the size of Erik’s. And twice as rundown. The clapboard shingles faded and stained. Moss and algae carpeting the roof. A broke down orange Coronet rests in the weeds in the side yard, its hood propped open. Alex himself is sitting on the front step, nursing a beer like he knew Erik was coming.

Erik doesn’t bother with niceties, cutting right to the point. “Who else knows?” he asks.

“No one. Not even Armando. And you _owe me_ for that one.” Alex doesn’t bother with niceties either. “Probably not in your better interests, Lehnsherr, if anyone else finds out that knife belongs to you.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Erik says fiercely. Not lately anyway.

“Nah, I know,” Alex says. “But someone wants to make it look like you did. Do I really have to twist your arm to make you see who?”

Erik seeks out Bolivar next, and finds him tucked away at the Inn, his nose in a book and his fingers feeling across the table for the plate of brown sugar scones next to his steaming coffee mug.

Erik sits down in front of him without announcing himself. Slowly, Bolivar turns a page, chews quietly on the scone.

Erik drums his fingers impatiently against the table. “What are you reading?” he asks finally, eyeing the book’s fearful cover. Garish rioting oranges and reds surrounding the back silhouette of a man in a suit holding a gun.

“Hardboiled crime,” Bolivar says, without looking up. “ _Catching Death_. Pulp is a guilty pleasure of mine. Help yourself to a scone.”

Erik doesn’t budge an inch. “I need to talk to you.”

Bolivar takes his time dogearing the page, closing his book and folding his hands on the table.

There are stories Erik learned, years ago, of merfolk walking on land. Luring would-be lovers to watery graves. Bestowing curses and stirring up storms. Wreaking harm for harm’s sake alone.

There are stories of protective charms; Iron buried under the doorsill. Bells and daisy chains. Red thread and a nail in the pocket.

And there are stories of the failure of those charms.

Someone’s been inside his house. And taken what isn’t theirs.

Erik is dealing with an enemy too slippery to catch. At least if he continues working alone. But just as he opens his mouth to speak, he’s overcome by the strangest feeling; a chill on his skin like a cloud’s passed over the sun.

Bolivar lifts his eyebrows expectantly.

Erik brushes aside the feeling. He says, “I’ve changed my mind.”

 

* * *

 

He’s alone. For long moments after Max – _Erik’s_ gone, he does nothing but sit and watch the sea. If Azazel saw him now, Charles isn’t sure if he would pity him or laugh. This new form of his is not at all what he’d imagined it’d be. It’s too soft. Too fleshy. Too dry. It takes effort not to itch himself raw. And worst of all, he has no words and his legs refuse to obey him.

Then there’s the trouble of shouldering the sideways glances, the uneasy fascination from people unused to a wordless boy and his useless legs. He’d thought it normal at first. But no one looks at Erik with the same barefaced curiosity. A _cripple_ Victor called him.

The sea _shhhhhhs_ him. He closes his eyes. Azazel would do nothing to deliberately hurt him. The fault, he suspects, lies with his blade. _Carved by your own hand._ Magic requires truth and Charles had foolishly lied.

 _Victor knows_. _And Erik doesn’t_. Charles doesn’t know how. All he knows is that he wants Victor far away from him.

Bolivar has his knife. He’ll be needing that back. His head pounds. He has no idea how to get himself out of this mess.

Raven would know how. He smiles bitterly to himself. Opens his eyes.

Dust glints in the afternoon light. Erik’s cottage really is just this one room. The sofa and armchair faced toward a window full of nothing but sky and the sea. A table and two chairs under the opposing window full of nothing but green pine. The kitchenette behind its short counter. Erik’s bed in an alcove. The bathroom separate, tucked away behind its own door. Erik’s world is surprisingly smaller than Charles imagined it’d be.

The light shifts. A bird trilling somewhere away in the trees. Charles grips the wheelchair. Moments later, he lets himself outside.

It’s rough, slow-going over the pine needles. And Charles’s forearms burn from the effort. But it’s worth it.

Dappled golden light shifts with the wind. Cool shadows spreading out beneath every dark tree. Wild violets eddying across the ground. The flash of bird wings. And Charles’s eyes shivering over all these things. Pine hangs on the air. The smell of sun-warmed resin.

Behind a patch of dark ferns, he finds a shallow forest pool, smooth as glass, reflecting the forest back to him. He wonders if it’s like the bath. The water made silken by the absence of salt. With a gentle breath of wind, the pool ripples invitingly, and his fingers find the buttons of his shirt, one of Erik’s soft white button-downs, slipping two buttons – three – before he spots the little yellow cap bright and cheery in the pine needles. His mouth waters at the sight. There’s dozens of the little caps now that he’s hunting for them.

He gathers them up one by one, tipping his chair to get at one hiding behind a fallen log.

He startles at the gruff caw from somewhere above. He looks up and finds a raven judging him with one beady black eye. He has the strangest feeling it can see straight through his disguise. In the stories he was fed on, ravens are ill omens of things to come. The bird reminds him of his sister. He finds a stone under the pine needles and throws it. The raven flaps its wings and laughs just like her.

The light’s turned to golden syrup dripping between the pines by the time crunching pine needles reach his ear. He looks up from his little bundle of mushrooms to see Erik leaned against a tree, watching him.

“Armando have you foraging for mushrooms?” His smile hooks Charles’s stomach and pulls. “I tried doing it, but I somehow always end up bringing back the poisonous kind.”

Charles swallows his mouthful and frowns. Poisonous kind?

Erik frowns back. “Let me see what you’ve got there.” Charles hesitantly holds out his remaining mushrooms, dumping them in Erik’s palm. Erik’s face twists. “How many did you eat? Charles?” Charles shrugs. “All right. Come on,” Erik says. He doesn’t bother with Charles’s chair, looping an arm under Charles’s knees and scooping him up instead, carrying him swiftly from the woods.

 _I’m cursed_ , Charles thinks miserably, flat on his back on Erik’s bed while Irving peers down at him critically, Armando hovering anxiously by his shoulder.

“False morels,” Armando says, splitting open one of Charles’s mushrooms, “have a stem connecting to the very top of the cap. It’s filled with this fiber here. The real ones are hollow all the way through from the bottom of the stem to the top of the cap. And you still shouldn’t eat them raw.”

“Abdominal pain,” Irving says. “Nausea. Vomiting. Neurotoxicity occurs in severe cases. Delirium. Seizures. Coma.”

“ _That won’t happen_ ,” Erik says vehemently. “It’s just a couple false morels.”

“Even so, the toxins _must_ be expelled,” Irving says.

“Did you eat a death cap?” Armando asks, his voice pinched as he sorts through the remaining mushrooms. Erik makes a strange sound, but Charles doesn’t look at him. Armando holds a mushroom close to his face. It looks innocent enough. Charles shakes his head _no_ and groans. “Death caps are _fatal_ ,” Armando says.

Irving clucks his tongue disapprovingly, his wizened hands cold on Charles’s belly. He pokes and prods. None too gently. Charles bites down on his tongue to keep from whimpering. “A general rule-of-thumb,” Irving says, “is gastrointestinal symptoms 2 hours after ingestion aren’t life threatening. Symptoms not developing until 5 hours later or more, however, have more potential for _severe_ toxicity.”

“I wasn’t gone that long,” Erik says. “It hasn’t been 5 hours. He says he didn’t eat that many.”

“Good,” Irving says, “then we may avoid a hospital admission. I’ll prepare a saline solution.”

Really, Charles just wants them all to go away so he can close his eyes and sleep away the pain and humiliation.

“Make sure he drinks enough water,” Irving says, nearly an hour later. “And call me again if he experiences any other symptoms.” He levels Charles a disparaging look. “Sensible people don’t go around eating willy-nilly mushrooms. My boy, _try_ and use your head next time.”

Charles hates him. He’s sweaty and shaky and his throat’s raw from throwing up. Each time he thought they were finished, Irving would cluck his tongue and force Charles through another round. His head aches and his ribs ache and his empty, snarling stomach aches. He doesn’t want to see another mushroom so long as he lives. He’s grateful Armando’s taken the offending buggers with him on his way out the door.

“How do you feel?” Erik asks. Charles gives him a withering look that does nothing but make Erik smile. “I’m sorry, but it was for your own good.”

Human or not, Charles seriously considers biting him. That is until Erik combs callus roughened fingers through his hair, and he forgets altogether what he was thinking.

It feels good, the firm drag across his scalp, the sound he makes urging Erik to continue. There’s something newly attentive about the way Erik looks at him now. Like Charles is something significant. Something dear.

 

* * *

 

After Charles poisoning himself, Erik stops telling himself their living arrangement is temporary. He realizes Charles has become another fixture in his life. Someone he expects to find in the night when he’s searching for comfort. Like the clink of the radiator or the dry crackle of the woodstove. The hush of the sea. The rustle of Charles’s blankets, his breathing, are part of that puzzle now. And all Erik can think to say to him is, “Armando has a field guide. I’ll get him to show it to you.”

He sits on the edge of the bed where Charles is curled on his side, watching him through half-lidded eyes, and wracks his brain for something else to say. Something that isn’t _I’m so glad you’re okay_. Or _please don’t ever scare me like that again_. Something a mile away from what he wants to say and gives nothing of himself away. “You can have the bed tonight. I’ll sleep on the sofa.”

He quietly readies himself for bed, making certain the door’s locked, turning down the lights. He’s sure Charles is asleep by now, but as the oil lamp beside the bed turns down, darkening the room, Charles’s hand reaches out to him, his eyes earnest in the dark.

A breath passes – two – before Erik slowly takes the offered hand, letting himself be pulled down to the bed.

Charles smiles through a sleepy soft sound and yawns. Erik’s heart beats wildly in his chest as he arranges the covers. They’re only sharing a bed. It’s innocent. But with Charles it feels like danger. Until the moment Charles’s warm hand finds his under the covers, giving a little squeeze, and then it feels like safety.

He has the nightmare. The one that leaves him shaking and sweating and feeling like his insides have been hooked and turned inside out. The echoing reverb of a gunshot. Blood spattered on a wall. His mother lying in a pool of it on the floor. Schmidt’s voice in his ear. _This is how we unlock your gift. Anger. Anger and pain._

Just when he thinks it’s over, the dreamscape changes, and snow falls heavy from the sky, fire licking the trees. He’s chasing Magda but can’t call out to make her stop. Terror turns her nearly unrecognizable as she throws a look back at him over her shoulder. When he can run no further, his sides close to splitting with his heaving breaths, she turns, an accusatory ghost, always and forever an untouchable distance away, her bare feet wreathed in flames.

Charles is close when he opens his eyes. Close enough his breath is warm on Erik’s face. They lay, twin parenthesis breathing each other’s air. Erik stiffens as one of Charles’s pale hands raises to his temple, gently carding through his hair. An imitation of earlier. He meets Charles’s eyes, two shining pools in the dark, and one breath at a time, convinces himself to relax. He doesn’t dare speak to break this spell.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Art inspired by The flutter of your earnest heart, it will fill the silent seas](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6259435) by [Mikanskey](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mikanskey/pseuds/Mikanskey)




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